


The Remission

by Derin



Series: Parting the Clouds [22]
Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-30
Updated: 2018-03-30
Packaged: 2019-04-14 21:19:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 22,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14144811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Derin/pseuds/Derin
Summary: Sorry this is late, just got out of hospital. Thanks to Redtailedhawk90 and Liz for their excellent beta work.The Animorphs have a problem. Elfangor's blue box, the box that gave them all the power to morph, has turned up... in the hands of a random civilian. And now they have to get it before the yeerks do, or else said civilian, then the Animorphs, and then the entire world, are going to be in really big trouble.But that's not as easy as it sounds. The finder of the box, whose name is David, doesn't trust them enough to cooperate, and the Animorphs can't afford to give awy enough secrets to gain his trust. How can these groups reach an agreement that will keep everybody out of yeerk hands, let alone the morphing cube?





	1. Chapter 1

My heart thundered in my ears as I gasped, breaths coming hard and fast but somehow failing to provide me with enough air. My eyes were squeezed shut, my hands clenched as I hunkered in my seat.

“What you are experiencing is called a panic attack.” Dr Johnson's low, calm voice sunk into my racing mind. “Would you like to learn some techniques to help manage them?”

I nodded, not opening my eyes. The voice continued.

“Right now, you are trying to pull air into your body, trying to fight the feeling of need for it that comes with panic. It won't help. Your body is lying to you. You're trying to draw breath over breath; instead, try breathing _out_. Push all the air that you can out of your lungs, and then relax and let them re-inflate naturally.”

I blew air out around my clenched teeth, as much as I could, and then sucked it back in.

“Good try. But you don't have to breathe in with force. If you exhale as much as you can and then relax, your lungs will fill by themselves.”

Relax? He was telling me to _relax_? I tried again, forcing air out, pulling it in. I knew I wasn't doing it right but at least I was actually getting some air. A couple of minutes later, the world resettled around me, and I opened my eyes.

“Is this the first time this has happened to you?” Doctor Johnson asked.

I shook my head. “Fourth, I think. Maybe fifth?” It was hard to tell, what with all the normal battle terror and screaming nightmares.

“I can teach you a technique that might help to manage them, if you're willing.”

I nodded. “I'd like that.”

“This is something that you should do three times a day, when you're not having an attack. You need to take ten deep breaths.”

“Ten deep breaths? That's it?”

“Ten very specific breaths. You need to inhale deep in your belly for a count of two, hold your breath for a count of eight, and exhale for a count of four. You can make the counts longer and longer as you get more used to it, but keep the two-eight-four ratio. They should be big, slow breaths. If you keep this up, then when you feel an attack coming on, you just need to start counting your breaths and your heart will automatically slow down.”

“Two-eight-four, ten breaths, three times a day.”

“That's right. Do you want to try now?”

I nodded and sat back, breathing on Dr Johnson's counts. After the whole missing-in-the-forest incident, my parents had insisted that I see a counsellor again. I'd gone back to Johnson because, Controller or not, his advice was usually useful, and he never pressured me to talk about things I didn't want to talk about, so I wouldn't have to spin too elaborate a lie about my time lost out there.

And Marco hadn't made a single Sharing joke.

My session was scheduled during recess which was just about over, so I thanked Johnson, turned down his offer to get me out of my next class, listened politely to his usual Sharing pitch, and managed to get all the way to my locker just as the bell rang. I had all my books ready by the time the hall was flooded with students.

I closed my locker, swept my gaze over the hallway, and was immediately seized by a wave of intense vertigo.

It wasn't another panic attack that left me slumped against my locker and trying not to drop anything, but it was something very, very familiar. The world rocked, my stomach lurched; strange concepts of distance and location assembled themselves in my head in forms that I didn't understand and I was pulled down, down into the ocean... a call for help echoing in my mind...

It was what Ax called _thalhu_ ; an echo of a mentally imprinted message that could be triggered by specific events. Ax had told me that the effects would lessen over time, although to me they seemed entirely random, with one exception: the trigger. The trigger that brought Ax's distress call back into my mind was always the same.

I scanned the crowd for an Animorph, any Animorph, squinting through the dizziness. There, walking past. I dashed forward and grabbed at Marco's wrist, pulled him out of the crowd, pulled him close.

“Cassie!” Marco tried to pull back, but my fingers were digging tightly enough to bruise. “Are you okay?”

“Never mind me!” I hissed, trying not to fall on him too obviously. “I think there's something andalite here! You have to find it!”

He glanced quickly around, pulled us a bit farther from the passing students who were raising eyebrows at us and, occasionally, whistling. I supposed that our mumbled mouth-to-ear conversation could look a little bit intimate to strangers. (It didn't help that people hadn't completely stopped staring at me in the halls after seeing my photo on every news station with MISSING written below it in big letters.) “Something andalite? At school? Are you sure?”

“No, I'm not sure. But Marco, if there is...”

“Then we need to find it,” he finished. “Before the yeerks do.”


	2. Chapter 2

I decided to skip class after all, knowing Johnson would back me up if my teacher made anything of it. I morphed to share the general situation with Jake and Rachel via thought-speak. Neither of them responded, so I supposed they must already be in class. It looked like this was a problem for Marco and me.

Marco searched the hall while I headed for Ax's meadow for advice. The more I thought about it, the more I realised I was probably overreacting. Ax's distress signal had only ever been triggered in my mind by andalite writing, but that didn't mean that it was the only trigger. Ax had said that he'd put several restrictions into his message to make sure it only reached andalites; maybe I'd found another one. Maybe I'd seen something that was the exact shade of violet of an andalite flower or something. Maybe I'd heard something that sounded like an animal call from the andalite homeworld. Maybe it was just a random symptom of the beating my mind had been taking over the past couple of months. It could have been anything. And there was no reason for anything andalite to be at the school; that place was crawling with yeerks, and if they had any captured tech, they certainly wouldn't be waving it around aboveground. It was probably nothing.

Ax and Tobias were having a conversation in private thought-speak when I dropped from the sky and landed next to his scoop. <We might have a problem,> I announced as I started to demorph.

<A problem? At school?> Tobias asked. <Is somebody captured?>

<No. Ax, do you remember that time you sent out that distress signal from the ocean?>

<Of course.>

<Right, you know how sometimes andalite things trigger a kind of replay? Well, I got one. At school. I need to know what kind of things can do that. Other than andalite writing, of course.>

<I... I do not know. I am sorry, it is not something I did intentionally. I did not go out of my way to set triggers.>

“But you set restrictions, right?” I asked with my newly human mouth. “Identifying characteristics, so that only andalites should have gotten your message. On Leera you gave the impression that they should have something to do with it.”

<They should, but they could be anything,> he said, shaking his head in a very human way.

<Guys,> Tobias said, <why don't we approach this from the other direction?>

“Other direction?” I asked.

<Ax is an andalite, he'd recognise andalite stuff. Both you and I get this writing trigger problem. So why don't we head to the school and comb it until we find the trigger?>

I bit my lip. We did need to find out if there was any kind of threat, but the school was currently full of students, and if we waited for them to clear out, it would just be full of Controllers. Still, we'd infiltrated the place when it was full of Controllers before. But I had a new issue to deal with. “My parents are still kind of clingy after the whole forest thing,” I said. “They'll freak out if I'm out all night searching.”

<Then we must work quickly,> Ax said. <Tobias and myself have no time-sensitive obligations, we will remain longer if necessary.>

I nodded and started to remorph. “But it's probably nothing, right?” I said as feathers sprouted from my skin. “I mean, why would the yeerks have andalite tech just hanging about the school?”

<I do not know. It is possible that they have salvaged something from combat, or even from the Dome we left in the ocean.>

The Dome. I'd forgotten about that. “Anything important on it?” I asked.

<Nothing that the yeerks did not already have. I wiped the computer drives before leaving. I am not an idiot.>

It didn't take long to hash out the plan. We all knew our usual roles. Tobias would stay in the air and monitor anybody entering or leaving the school, while Ax and I could search the school itself as fly and rat, respectively. Rat wasn't an ideal morph for a building full of people, but I wasn't sure that an insect's eyes would pick up whatever I'd seen in a way that could trigger the _thalhu_. And without that, I'd have no idea what I was looking for.

I called for Marco once in thought-speak range of the school, but he didn't respond. I figured he wasn't in morph, which meant he'd probably been caught loitering in the halls and sent to class. I circled the school until I found him, sitting up the back in math class, looking intent for once.

I landed on the windowsill of the classroom, a very out-of-place osprey hidden from most of the class by a pot plant inside the room. <Marco, I've got eyes on you. Did you find the problem?>

A microscopic nod.

<Is it bad?>

Another nod, slightly larger.

<Is there anything we can do about it right now?>

A tiny shake of the head. Marco flicked the fingers of one hand forward, a _look over there_ gesture. I wasn't sure what he was getting at until I realised that he wasn't looking at the teacher. His gaze was boring holes in the back of another student's head.

The boy was about average height, sullen-looking, with blond hair a little paler than Tobias' human morph. Like a lot of the students, he was paying barely any attention to the teacher. His gaze flicked frequently toward the clock. He didn't look that remarkable, aside from the fact that I hadn't seen him around the school before. Scrutinising him certainly wasn't making me feel dizzy.

<I don't understand,> I told Marco. <He looks normal.> But Marco was doodling something on the corner of a sheet of paper. Two squares, their corners joined with lines – a cube, the sort of simple geometric shape a bored kid might draw in class. It seemed unremarkable. Marco added a crude hand touching it, and something aside from Marco's drawing skill made it look a little strange. It took me a moment to realise that it had too many fingers. He started cross-hatching it in blue. An andalite hand. Placed over a blue box.

Elfangor's morphing cube.


	3. Chapter 3

Marco was able to race somewhere after class and morph fast enough to stop us from just cornering the guy, which turned out to be a good thing. Apparently Marco had searched his locker and hadn't found the cube itself, but he'd been carrying photographs of it.

<His name is David,> Marco explained. <He’s new. I asked him about the photos, and he said he’d brought them to use the school scanner so he could put them on the internet. He says he was exploring the town when he found this weird cube at the construction site, and now he’s trying to sell it on the internet.>

<Why?> I asked.

<How is this possible?> Ax despaired. <The _escafil_ device should have been destroyed when the yeerks disintegrated my brother’s ship! How could it possibly have survived at the landing site this long? The yeerks absolutely cannot be allowed to obtain this device. >

<We’re all on the same page there, Ax-man,> Tobias agreed. <But if he puts that thing on the internet, the yeerks will definitely notice.>

<Then some ‘andalite bandits’ need to have a chat with him before he gets the chance,> I said.

<See,> Marco said, <there’s the problem. He’s already put it up. The photos are just for confirmation. He’s got an offer from some willing to pay a lot of money once he sees the photos. Says he’ll go any place, any time.>

<Visser Three,> Ax growled.

<Or a lackey,> Tobias agreed. <Either way, it’ll end up in his hands, and that’s bad news. One shapeshifting Visser is barely enough for us to handle; if the shock troops get morphing powers? This little resistance force is sunk.>

<As are many such forces on other planets,> Ax added. <It will make little difference in space battles, but anywhere that open ground war has broken out… can those filthy slugs not leave anything andalite alone?!>

<Guys, guys, you’re all so defeatist,> Marco said in an extremely un-Marco-like way. <The yeerks don’t have the blue box yet. We need to find Jake and Rachel. Plan this out. He’s one kid. How much trouble could he be?>

We met up with Jake and Rachel at lunch, with Ax and Tobias hanging out as two roaches in Marco’s sleeve. We tried not to look too obviously stressed as we scoped out a table out of hearing range of everyone else and discussed the probable doom of our planet.

“We search his house,” Marco said quietly. “In, find it, out, before they know we even know.” He was careful not to use any words like ‘yeerk’. He also raised an eyebrow as if he’d made a joke, and a couple of us faked snickers. We had to make the conversation seem normal from a distance.

“I still say we talk to him,” I shrugged. “Usual routine. It’s worked so far.”

“It’s worked so far with people leaving town, or who aren’t under yeerk suspicion,” Rachel countered. “This kid is in the crosshairs. They’ll want it and they’ll want to know everything about how he found it. They’ll get him for sure. Too risky.”

Jake nodded. “The less he knows, the less they know,” he said. “We need to find this thing and get it before they know we’ve found it. But it’s probably already a trap.”

<Jake’s right,> Tobias said. <I’m sure the yeerks expect andalites to know how to use the internet. They’ll assume we know, and trying to find or take this thing will be a trap.>

“Could it all be a trap?” Rachel asked, very quietly. “Fake photos?” She gave a fairly realistic chuckle, and the rest of us followed suit. I think mine sounded particularly forced, but that was okay. Forest trauma. I was riding that train of forest trauma as far as I could.

<A trap is possible, but it is not a chance that we can take,> Ax said. <Besides, if they are setting such a trap at your school, that suggests a strong suspicion of your identities.>

Point. If they expected the ‘andalite bandits’ to see things at school, during school hours…

“That could _be_ the trap,” Marco mumbled, in the tone of a joke but too low for anyone outside our table to make out the words. “If we react, they’re right.”

<But if we don’t and he really does have it...> Tobias pointed out.

Jake nodded. “So we do this quiet. If they’re looking for a reaction, we have to be as invisible as possible, and if it’s real… same thing. Nobody talk to this kid. We track him, we look for the thing, and if it’s real, we steal it. Marco, you’re out of this mission, if possible.”

“What? Why?” Marco frowned, forgetting to look casual. Rachel nudged him. He hoisted a fake relaxed smile onto his face.

“You’ve already spoken to David about the photos, yeah? You have to look one hundred per cent innocent. Just in case.”

“Erek – ”

“No, none of them. Puts them in too much danger. We do this ourselves, quick and quiet.”

“On an unknown time limit,” I mumbled.

“No choice. We can’t fail this one.”

<We will not,> Ax said, fierce determination in every word. <We will not let that device fall into yeerk hands.>


	4. Chapter 4

“Okay,” Jake said, rubbing his temples wearily, “tell us exactly what happened.”

In the barn rafters, Tobias preened a wing. A hawk’s face isn’t expressive, but I was pretty sure he was trying to avoid Jake’s eyes. Jake trained his gaze on Ax instead. Ax shuffled uneasily from one harrier leg to the other.

<We were too few,> he said, <and not appropriately prepared for such a mission.>

“Noted,” Jake said, crossing his arms.

<We were able to successfully determine the human’s address from the school records. As per the plan, we proceeded to search his house for the _escafil_ device – the morphing cube – while the four of you remained visibly in class for the benefit of any potential watchers. >

“And then?”

<The device was not in the human’s bedroom, his parents’ bedroom, the interconnecting hall, or the Southern half of the lounge. We were able to search these places thoroughly.>

“And what happened to stop you finishing the lounge?”

Ax looked away. Tobias rescued him.

<There was a burglar alarm,> he said.

Marco choked back a laugh. “After all the yeerk facilities we’ve broken into, all the spying, you two were foiled by a good ol’ human burglar alarm?” he asked, grinning.

<We checked for one!> Tobias said defensively.

<There were no indications of any alarms or sensors before we entered the premises,> Ax confirmed.

<This house was serious, though. They have a gun safe the size of a walk-in closet. They probably had some kind of weird secret apocalypse prepper alarm.>

“Apocalypse prepper?” I asked.

<You know. Those guys who think society will collapse soon so they build bomb shelters in their yards and learn how to make fire with sticks and collect way too many guns.>

“Are you deep in this little culture, Tobias?” Marco asked, raising an eyebrow.

<I see them in the woods sometimes. This couple runs survival classes for them, they go out there and learn how to make traps and talk about how when the world ends only they and their families will make it and all the poor blind civilians who don’t know what’s going on will die for their lack of preparation.>

“And what would their chances be in an apocalypse, do you think?” I asked. “If they’re already prepared for the end, would they be good at fighting, say, a secret alien invasion?”

<Not good, on both accounts,> Tobias said, ruffling his wings in an imitation of a shrug. <I already thought about it. They’re hobbyists, most of them just like to feel smarter and stronger than anyone else. I don’t think they’re more useful than, say, any random human. Also they tend to be kind of… aggressive. Can’t wait for society to collapse to they can be the top dog, kind of thing. Assume that an apocalypse means a bunch of people fighting each other.>

“The alarm,” Jake said patiently.

<Right. The alarm. We didn’t notice anything until the back door opened.>

<Before we could flee,> Ax continued, <an adult human with a primitive projectile weapon sighted us. He commanded that we do not move and aimed his weapon.>

“What kind of weapon?” Rachel asked.

<A simple projectile – >

<Hangun,> Tobias said. <Of some kind.>

Jake nodded in understanding. “And with the police infiltrated by the yeerks, you had to escape before you were arrested. How did you do that? Anything else we need to know that might complicate trying this mission again?”

There was silence for several seconds before Tobias said, unconvincingly, <No, I think that’s all the important parts.>

Jake put a hand on his hip and didn’t move his eyes from Tobias. “You think?”

<Well, we didn’t actually get to the police calling stage. So, you know, bonus there.>

“Uh-huh.”

<The human entered the room prepared, but something about our presence made him startled and extremely angry,> Ax interjected helpfully.

“Probably a couple of teenagers robbing him,” Marco said, nodding knowingly.

Tobias gave a mental sigh. <No, it was you, Ax-man. We’ve been over this. Over how important clothes are to humans, right?>

Ax puffed his feathers a little, primly. <I do not understand how such items relate to our searching for powerful andalite technology.>

Rachel put her face in her hands. Marco turned away quickly. Jake went a particularly interesting shade of red and tried to keep his face blank.

“You didn’t correct him, Tobias?” I asked.

<I was more interested in trying to find the powerful alien technology than wasting more time over human culture,> he said dryly.

“Well,” Marco announced to the barn wall, “I guess he might not have assumed you were burglars, then.”

“How did you escape?” Jake asked.

The birds both shuffled a bit.

<I may have… panicked,> Ax said awkwardly. <Humans have so few natural weapons and are quite unstable… it is a frightening morph...>

“Panicked.”

<He tried to attack the man with his fingernails,> Tobias clarified.

“With your fingernails?” I asked.

<It was the only natural blade available!>

“No it isn’t,” Rachel pointed out. “You could have bit him.” Jake glared at her. She shrugged.

<Anyway,> Tobias said, <the dude didn’t seem too keen on shooting a teenager running at him, but he did punch him in the chest.>

“And I’m guessing that instead of retreating, this is where you got involved?” Jake asked, sounding resigned.

<He hit Ax!>

“What did you do?”

<Nothing! I just startled him a bit.>

I’d seen Tobias panic in human morph before. I tried not to grin at the thought of him launching himself at a man, screeching and smacking his “wings” into the poor man’s face. Jake must have been picturing something similar. He leaned back against an empty cage and put his face in his hands.

<We were not able to locate the _escafil_ device, > Ax concluded.

<But it definitely isn’t in the back half of the house,> Tobias added. <Or it wasn’t as of mission time.>

We all looked at each other.

“Well then,” Rachel said, “I guess it’s time to go in.”

“With what?” Marco asked. “We don’t know where to find this thing, we don’t know the kid, we don’t know if it’s a trap.”

“Well, the family’s probably tipped off that something’s weird now, and if the yeerks are watching then they know we know, or will soon. We can’t risk doing nothing just because it might be a trap.”

<Walking into traps and nearly dying is kind of our speciality,> Tobias pointed out. <We’re experts at it by now.>

Rachel shot him a look. “Anyway, this is way too important to be timid about. The chances of this being a trap are – ”

<High,> Ax said. We all looked at him. It wasn’t like Ax to interrupt people.

“Why, Ax?” Marco asked when Ax didn’t seem inclined to elaborate.

<As I said before. That device should not have been in the construction site. Did the yeerks not eliminate all traces of Elfangor’s ship?>

“Elfangor said they would,” I confirmed. “we didn’t stick around to watch them do it, but...”

<Then the cube should have been incinerated with the ship. If the yeerks had had any idea that it was aboard, they would have harvested it for themselves; Visser Three’s host would be capable of operating the device. Either way, it certainly should not have been lying about for a human to find.>

“Elfangor did have it outside the ship,” Rachel pointed out, “and somehow hid it before the Visser ate him. There’s a chance – ”

<That it would instead have been picked up by the transients who frequent the site, or the yeerks who have turned it into a short-notice landing site? Perhaps. That it would remain untouched for this length of time? I find that far less likely than a trap.> He preened a wing. Preening when annoyed was a habit he’d picked up off Tobias.

I frowned. Ax seemed far too worried for a simple yeerk bluff. What could be bothering him? Was it just because this was andalite technology?

Marco realised the problem before I did. “You think they already have it, don’t you?” he asked. “You think they found this morphing cube, this esk… _escafil_ device, and now they’re waving their flag in the hope of baiting some andalite bandits in the bargain?”

<It is a distinct possibility,> Ax said tersely.

Marco shook his head. “It’s a stupid plan. I mean, if they don’t have the morphing cube, then yeah, it’s good bait. But if they do, they’re better off keeping it secret and surprising us. That’s what we’d do.”

<We are not the yeerk empire,> Ax pointed out.

“They are a bigger force than us,” Jake said thoughtfully. “Different tactics. Visser Three doesn’t do _little_ plans.”

“Marco the optimist,” Rachel said, raising her eyebrows. “Never thought Marco would be the one saying ‘hey guys, maybe it’s not as bad as we think’. What happened to the pessimist in the group?”

“I’m not an optimist or a pessimist, I’m a realist,” he said patiently.

“That’s what pessimists say.”

“You want me to phrase it darker? Fine. If Visser Three had the morphing cube, we’d already be dead. He wouldn’t need to lay these little traps. He’d spy us out and kill us.”

“How do you know no little yeerk bugs were spying at the school?” Rachel asked, inspecting her fingernails. Then she seemed to realise what she’d said. She went white.

“Call your dad,” I told her as I headed for the door. “I’ll get my folks, we can split – ”

“Nobody go anywhere,” Jake said sharply. I ignored him, but was stopped short by Marco’s hand around my wrist. His grip was far, far stronger than his frame would suggest – like me, the ability to heal at will had made him careless about how he used his muscles. I could feel my wrist already bruising. I turned and glared at him.

“Let go of me and go save your dad!” I snapped.

“How?” he asked. “If the yeerks know, you’re walking into a trap. They’re already taken.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” I growled, using my free hand to lever his grip open. He let me. “You have no idea what you – ” I stopped. Marco’s brows were raised. I could feel myself blushing.

Marco had last seen his mother at the bottom of the ocean, an alien slave. He’d drowned her to save us.

I looked away, and found myself looking into the eyes of Jake, who had been living with the enemy the whole time.

I sighed. “Okay,” I said. “Sorry, I… I didn’t mean…” I leaned against the wall and looked at the floor.

“Let’s all calm down,” Jake said reasonably. “Let’s focus on what we know.” He started to count on his fingers. “One: We already act under total secrecy when it comes to our families. Tobias and Ax track them semi-regularly for safety. There’s no reason to change that. Two: if Ax is right and it’s unlikely that the morphing cube has remained hidden this long only for this human kid to find it, then the same is true for the yeerks, right? They’re not likely to find it this late in the game either. Would you agree, Ax?”

<Yes,> Ax said reluctantly.

“So, we have no reason to think that the yeerks have the _escafil_ device. I’m sure Visser Three knows what one looks like; if it’s a trap, they could fake photos. Three: if the yeerks thought we were human, would they be this messy about it?”

I shook my head. “Social infiltration is what they do,” I said. “They’d narrow it down, quiet as possible, and if they did think we were at the school then they have systems in place for that.”

<Systems?> Ax asked.

“The counsellors. They could put them on it, on getting as much information as they could. Forcibly infest the most likely suspects, get more information from them, watch everyone in the meantime… I mean the sheer number of Controllers there already cut their suspect list down a lot. The yeerks have done traps before but having some kid randomly carry around suspicious photos through a school, secretly, in the hope we’d notice? Too messy, even for them.” I raised my eyebrows. “Wow. Are we actually getting too paranoid?”

< _Can_ you be too paranoid for a body snatcher invasion? > Tobias asked.

“Marco was the one who thought the rest of us were overreacting,” Rachel pointed out.

<Okay, yeah. Good point.>

“So we think, what, this kid is telling the truth? He has the morphing cube, and he isn’t a Controller? It’s not a yeerk trap?”

“Oh, it’s a trap,” Marco said. “I think he really was using the school scanner to set it, though. I think we’re supposed to find those images on the internet. He’s probably an innocent middle man, putting this up for a Controller relative or something.”

“Why not just use a Controller, though, and do it with their computers and stuff?” I asked.

“Well we did starve that yeerk out of that old lady,” Marco said.

“And rescued a bunch of uninfested hosts from the yeerk pool that one time,” Rachel added.

“And we don’t know what sorts of things Aftran had to claim to disappear from yeerk systems,” I sighed.

“So,” Jake said. “Running theory: yeerk trap, this kid is an ignorant middle man to stop us starving out a yeerk and getting information from its host. Second most likely theory: this kid has actually found this morphing cube. Third most likely: the yeerks are fishing at the school specifically, with or without the morphing cube, and we are in serious trouble.”

“Very unlikely,” Marco said.

Jake nodded. “Ax? Thoughts?”

<The logic is reasonable. But we should use caution.>

“Always. Rachel? Tobias? You guys haven’t said much.”

Rachel shrugged. “We can’t afford to ignore this unless we can be one hundred per cent certain it’s a trap. That cube is too valuable. So we can go in expecting a trap, sure, but we are going to have to go in.”

Jake nodded. “Tobias?”

<If it’s a trap, they have to find us and tell us where the cube supposedly is to spring it,> he said. <So the next step is the same either way. Whether it’s a trap or not, we find out where this kid has stashed the cube, or fake cube.>

“Standard ‘We are andalites who need your help’ spiel, then,” I said. “We get the information from this kid, send him off to Rachel’s dad, and decide what to do then?”

Rachel nodded. “So we send Cassie in to talk to – ”

“It’s gotta be Ax,” Marco, Jake and I all said at the same time. Rachel frowned.

“Ax is an actual andalite who we’ve already established as our spokesperson as far as the yeerks are concerned,” Jake explained. “If this might be a yeerk trap, that’s important.” He glanced at Ax. “Did David’s dad see you morph?”

<Partly,> Ax confirmed.

“Did he see Tobias morph?”

<Of course not!> Tobias said. <I’m not an idiot.>

“So if he’s a Controller, he definitely knows andalites are involved. Anyone have any objections to explaining the invasion to David, in the guise of andalite bandits?”

The team all shrugged or shook their heads.

“Okay. Then we have some planning to do.”


	5. Chapter 5

I snuck some sedatives from the barn that night. It was a bad idea, being too drugged to respond to danger, but the nightmares and the strange hours made it so hard to sleep a lot of the time. I needed to be fresh. Either we were going to throw ourselves at a trap, or we were racing yeerks for very important technology. So I took half a pill and mixed it into a milkshake before bed.

It put me down quickly, at least. If I dreamed, I don’t remember.

I had an early morning. We wanted to get David on his way to school, which was going to be a bit of a crunch for those of us who also had to go to school. Ax and Tobias were the main players in this mission; the rest of us were there in case something went wrong. If yeerks were watching, we wanted them to think that only a couple of us were there, and Ax and Tobias were the most recognizable. One red-tailed hawk and one harrier, hanging out on a rooftop in the sunrise. The rest of us kept a distance as seagulls, in a group of real seagulls. Perfect camouflage.

I shuffled from foot to foot and tried not to look nervous. We weren’t even supposed to be looking for danger, in case we looked suspicious. We were backup only. It wasn’t that I thought we needed more lookouts, with Tobias on the case, I just hated to be there but doing nothing.

Marco was the same. <Am I the only one who thinks this mission is weirdly slower than usual?> he asked, his mental voice sounding rather fidgety coming from a relaxed-looking bird. <We’re on day two of this mission. Somebody definitely should have almost died by now.>

<I usually consider is a good thing when we don’t face near-death,> Jake said.

<Also you’re wrong, Marco,> Rachel said. <This David kid’s dad could have shot Tobias and Ax. They faced near-death.>

<Okay, fair,> Marco conceded, and fell silent.

But I didn’t feel any better. I couldn’t tell if the whole team was off or if it was just me. I had been away from the group a lot lately, first in the forest with Aftran and then in Australia with Yami; was Ax tenser than usual, Marco more optimistic than usual, Rachel more relaxed than usual… or was it just me? Was I misremembering? Out of practice?

Or were they editing their behaviour for me? Watching their tongues? Did they trust me not to disappear again? We had been doing more talking, more planning, less action, but… well, we were just learning to fight more effectively, weren’t we? Surely that was a sign of us evolving as a whole team. Not that they were treating me with kid gloves. They knew I hadn’t disappeared on purpose. They knew they didn’t have to treat me like fragile china so I wouldn’t throw a tantrum and vanish.

Right?

Of course, I _had_ quit the Animorphs before disappearing into the forest, and I _had_ put them all in danger to protect Karen and Aftran.

I _had_ tricked Jake into getting off that plane to Australia, leaving me all alone on a mission where I should have had a partner.

But no, they were my team; they knew they could trust me. And I knew I trusted them. Didn’t I? It seemed that I hadn’t been acting like I did.

<There he is,> Rachel remarked, and I pulled my mind back to the present. Mission now, self-doubt later. The street was completely empty except for our target. David was taller than Rachel but not quite as tall as Jake; maybe a bit bigger than average for a thirteen-year-old. He was pale-skinned with blonde hair that was clearly a couple of weeks late for a cut. He wore a hoodie with the hood pushed back, and carried his schoolbag casually slung over one shoulder. He didn’t look like he was expecting any kind of danger. I couldn’t see any weapons. One of his shoes was untied.

<Can’t see anyone watching us or armed,> Tobias reported. <Ax-man, if we’re doing this, this is the time.>

<David.>

David froze. The expression on his face said very clearly that he had no idea what to make of the voice that had found its way into his brain without bothering to go through his ears. Either he was a really good actor, even for a Controller, or he was an innocent who had never heard thought-speak before.

<David, you are in danger. I can help you. Step into the street to your left.>

The street was an alley, leading between a couple of shops. A dumpster provided some limited cover. Not enough for our liking, but there weren’t too many points to stop him on his way to school that weren’t crowded with other people.

David stayed still for several more seconds before mumbling something too quietly for me to pick up.

<Your father will need to enact no revenge,> Ax said gently. <We are here to protect you. Please, speak with us.>

David mumbled something else, much shorter.

<I intend to show myself.> Ax swooped in front of David, close enough to be obvious but not close enough to be frightening, and into the alley. <Come, and I will answer some of your questions.>

David did, stuffing both hands into his pockets and casually strolling into the alley as if it was a perfectly normal thing to do.

<Ax is better at this than I thought he would be,> I remarked privately to Rachel.

<I think Tobias is feeding him lines,> Rachel replied. <He probably knows every we-come-in-peace speech from every scifi show ever.>

<Do they work in the movies?>

<Depends on the movie.>

David moved behind the dumpster and casually leaned against it. His choice of leaning position was very fortunate – he’d accidentally placed himself so that anyone who happened to walk by wouldn’t be able to see him. This also put him rather closer to those of us hanging out on the roof as seagulls.

Ax landed in front of him. <My name is Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill,> he said. <I am an alien soldier, a shapeshifter, here to defend your planet.>

“Defend my planet from what?”

<Other aliens. Aliens opposed to life, to freedom. They have come to destroy you, but we fight them. We fight them everywhere we can. David, you have come into possession of some very important technology of ours; technology that could turn the tide of this war, that we _must not_ allow our enemies to get their hands on. We need your help to –  >

“Uh-huh. I think we’re done here.” David turned to leave.

<Do you not understand what I am telling you?> Ax asked. <The fate of your planet hangs in the balance!>

“Yeah, I understand that you’re telling me the plot to Transformers.”

A pause.

<I do not understand.>

“You don’t understand the plot to Transformers? You’re probably not the best person to explain it, then. Not all Transformers, obviously; this is Sparkplug’s story. Or… wow, a lot of Witwicky’s, actually…. Look, it doesn’t matter. The important thing is that I’m not playing this stupid game, okay? You wanna play with trained birds and hidden microphones and stuff to freak me out? Not happening. When Dad hears about this he’s gonna kick your butt seven ways to Sunday, and it’ll be fourteen ways if you try to stop me. I’m just going to school, okay? That’s it. I have nothing to do with this.”

<Is it just me or is everyone way too stubborn about not believing in aliens?> Marco asked. <We believed it right away.>

<A spaceship with a blue centaur in it crash-landed in front of us,> Jake pointed out. <Okay, time to move in. We can – >

<Let Ax-man handle it,> Tobias said. <He can do it. We still can’t be sure it isn’t a trap.>

We glanced at Jake. He gave a tiny bird nod.

Ax was handling it. He was demorphing. And he definitely had David’s attention.

He’d had to move closer to David for the dumpster to hide him from the street. David shrank back against the metal behind him. He pulled both hands out of his pockets, and it became clear that shoving them in there hadn’t been a casual gesture – he was holding two long knives.

<Who is this kid?!> Marco wondered. <Also, how deep are his pockets?>

<Everyone get ready to dive,> Jake said tersely. <If he hits Ax while he’s helpless, we might need to distract him.>

<Oh, I could distract him,> Tobias said.

<Without ripping his eyes out,> Jake clarified.

Ax wasn’t a pretty morpher. During our conversation, he’d grown to the size of a chair, and patches of feathers had vanished to be replaced by scattered blue fur. His harrier eyes had popped out of his head, extended on stalks barely strong enough to hold them up, and holes were opening just above his beak to reveal his other two eyes.

<Do not be afraid,> Ax told David. An impossible request.

Ax’s legs thickened, and he stumbled. Two new legs sprouted just in time to catch him. His tail lengthened behind him, bladed; as soon as the blade appeared, David struck, but Ax neatly knocked both knives out of his hands with the new tail.

<My people are called the andalites,> Ax continued, keeping up a soft, calm stream of information as he morphed.. His voice was calm and reasonable, with no hint of anger at David’s panicked attack; for perhaps the first time, I could see Elfangor in him. The few moments we’d had with Elfangor had been moments like this, and never in a thousand years would I have expected Ax, the brash arrogant soldier who had so much trouble relating to humans, to pull it off. <We are here to defend you from the yeerks, body-snatchers and slavers. The yeerks crawl into human heads and take control of their bodies. They will do it to your entire planet if they are not stopped. That is why I am here.>

Fully andalite, Ax stepped back as far as he dared behind the fragile cover of the dumpster. I glanced over the street – still empty. Good. Ax raised both hands in a human gesture of peace, tail low.

David was pale and breathing heavily. He rubbed a tear out of his eye. He swallowed. “Can you turn into people?” he asked quietly.

<Humans? Yes.>

“You broke into my house. Dad saw you.”

<Yes. We were attempting to resolve this without involving you.>

“The box isn’t in the house.”

<Where is it?>

David stuck out his trembling jaw. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

<Yes, ideally.>

“I can’t tell you. What if you’re the bad guys and these other aliens are defending us? I have no reason to think you’re the good guys. You broke into my house. You’ve been following me. Watching me everywhere I go.”

<We have not, have we?> Ax asked the group.

<No.>

<Nope.>

<Definitely not.>

<I sit behind him in math class, does that count?>

Ax turned his attention back to David. <My people are not following you.>

“Well, somebody is.”

<Yeerks.> Ax said the word with his normal level of hatred and disgust. David flinched. <As I said, they take over human minds. Their spies are everywhere.>

<Okay, this kid’s definitely not a Controller,> Rachel said. <So if the yeerks are following him, why not just take him? Why tail him when they can get whatever they want from his brain?>

<Trap,> Marco said. <He probably has a fake cube or something to lure us out. If it’s real and the yeerks are actually after him, they definitely would have infested him.>

Before I could respond, a staff-only door in a shop bordering the alley suddenly opened. The Controller in the doorway raised a Dracon beam, and shot Ax.


	6. Chapter 6

<Go!> Jake shouted, but we were already going. Ax had jerked back, and that had saved his life; his right arm and a large chunk of his shoulder had been disintigrated. Blue blood poured down his body. Tobias was dropping from the sky like a stone, completely silently. The man re-aimed; Ax dodged, and lost his tailblade. By the time the Controller aimed again, he had a faceful of hawk to deal with. He screamed, clawing at his face, but Tobias hadn’t flown off; he remained on his head, gripping him like prey.

The Controller was pushed out of the doorway by two more. They were immediately swarmed by us seagulls.

<Ax, heal!> Jake commanded. <David, run!>

David bolted for the mouth of the alley, only to trip over his untied shoelace. He fell heavily, and lost precious seconds stumbling to his feet.

I was slammed against a wall, and dropped. Tobias was lying on the ground, a crumpled, bloody heap. I spared a moment to check him over – he was breathing.

The man who had shot Ax, head now streaming with blood from numerous bone-deep talon slices, grabbed David, who punched him. No effect. The man dragged David into the restaurant, the other controllers disappearing behind him.

<Ax, the dumpster,> Jake said. He looked mostly fine, except for a badly broken wing. Seagulls are not ideal battle morphs.

Ax, newly healed, used his tail to lever the dumpster open. He tossed us all inside to demorph on privacy. We wasted no time.

<Rachel, get David,> Jake commanded as we demorphed. <We can’t afford to let him fall into yeerk hands. We can’t be absolutely sure this isn’t a trap. Ax, either put on an Earth form or stay out of sight. Tobias, Marco, you’re lookouts; Cassie, you and me are in behind Rachel. Ax, what’s the time?>

<It is twenty of your minutes after the eighth morning hour,> Ax reported.

<Okay. We can’t afford to be late for school.>

<That’s what you’re thinking about right now?> Rachel asked incredulously. <School?>

Jake didn’t get a chance to reply, as he was mostly human. None of us wanted to make too much noise in the dumpster.

It took minutes to demorph and remorph. Minutes too long. We could hear David making a ruckus in the restaurant, screaming and fighting his captors. That he was still conscious meant there were non-controller witnesses. Tobias had already assured us that he the building probably wasn’t a yeerk pool entrance, meaning that now they’d… what? Call the cops, probably. Escort the rowdy teenager in a yeerk-controlled police car.

Was that a siren that I could hear in the distance?

Battle morph. Okay. I automatically focused on the wolf inside me, then stopped. Right, I had better than that now, didn’t I? All that time refusing to pick something to fight in, but I’d eventually stumbled on something very useful.

I focused on the leopard inside me.

Bones shrank, muscles tightened. Silky fur crept over my pale blue leotard, a brand new one that Rachel had helped me pick out after losing my old one in zero-space in Australia. It looked great on me, when it wasn’t covered in garbage.

The siren was getting closer. We leapt out of the dumpster; one leopard, one tiger, one grizzly. Marco took to the sky with Tobias, an osprey and a hawk. Ax inched forward in the alley, Dracon beam at the ready, waiting to intercept the police.

Rachel bellowed, and charged.

“RAAAAAWWR!!”

The big mistake that the Controllers had made was getting out too early. They should’ve killed as many of us as they could before Ax healed and attacked. They were too focused on the prize, and now they had to fight us for it all over again. In much more battle-ready bodies.

We’d made a lot of mistakes of our own – we had checked the streets, but not the buildings. We’d assumed that the yeerks wouldn’t spring their trap until we were lured to the supposed location of the _escafil_ device. But we’d recovered, and now it was battle time.

We knew how to do that.

Rachel moved through the closed door and surrounding frame like it wasn’t even there. The metal kitchen counter in front of her provided a bit more resistance, but not much. She stopped, squinted around at the room of cooks, all frozen and staring. One cook had a ladle of soup above a bowl; it dripped, slowly, about one drip per second. Another hadn’t noticed that the steak she was cooking had started to burn.

<Which way did the people with the screaming boy go?> Jake asked. A cook pointed.

<Door to your left, Rachel,> I prompted her. Bear eyesight wasn’t great.

She loped off to the left. Cooks scrambled to be well and truly out of her way.

The door in question disappeared under Rachel’s bulk.

TSEEEW! TSEEW!

Dracon fire. Rachel took both hits, and roared. They weren’t full power – good. I slunk under her legs and leapt at one of the Controllers, taking his Dracon beam in my powerful jaws and crushing it as I pinned him to the ground. Jake took the other. The man with the bleeding face wasn’t present – probably getting some first aid.

David was tied to a chair in the centre of the room. He had been gagged. The ropes on his arms and legs were far too tight; his fingers were starting to go blue. His face was a mix of pure terror and rage.

None of us were in the best position to untie ropes, so Rachel broke his chair into pieces. David started pulling at the knots.

The siren had stopped outside the building. Now for the hard part.

Rachel threw the still-bound David over her shoulder, ignoring his grunt of protest, and loped forward. It’s not particularly easy for a bear to carry someone who can’t hold on while they walk, but she managed it.

<Alley or front door?> she asked.

<Alley,> Jake said. <We don’t want a bunch of restaurant-goers in the way when we fight those cops.>

We made our way through the now-empty kitchen and back toward the alley. A very familiar bellow rang through the room.

<Was that a gorilla?> Rachel asked.

<Marco was supposed to be in the sky, scouting us an exit, right?> I asked Jake.

We sped up.

There were three cars out the front, all three with their engines still running. The front end of the police car was completely caved in. The white car behind it was riddled with gunfire, both normal human bullets and the distinctive burns of Dracon fire. The large black van in the back of the procession was dented in several places, but didn’t have any actual holes in it. Armoured? The windows were tinted, but whoever was in the passenger seat was firing bullets through a slightly cranked window.

Marco was indeed a gorilla, tossing armed Controllers into other armed Controllers. Tobias dropped from the sky to distract and disorient, raking the eyes of any Controller foolish enough not to look up. Ax used the corner of the restaurant to shield himself while he fired his stolen Dracon beam, taking out key threats.

<We need an exit!> Jake bellowed. Marco dropped the Controller he was holding and charged straight for the black armoured van. The Controller in the passenger seat wound down the window far enough to lean out, aiming his weapon.

This was a mistake. Marco grabbed the man’s collar and dragged him out the window, crushing the long barrel of his gun in one big gorilla fist as he dropped him on the pavement. He unlocked the door from the inside and tore it open.

David, still slung over Rachel’s shoulder, had managed to work a hand free of his ropes and ungag himself. “Dad!” he screamed.

The Controller on the ground looked up and met his eyes.

“That’s my dad!” David said breathlessly. “They’ll kill him, they’ll – ”

We barrelled past, Jake and I leaping through the door while Marco plonked his bulk into the way-too-small space behind the wheel. Jake opened the back of the van with his mouth; Rachel and Ax charged dashed inside.

David’s Dad drew a handgun from a holster on his hip. He aimed. He fired.

Not at any of us.

At David.

It was a tricky shot, shooting at a tiny moving target slung over the shoulder of a bear, from a position lying injured on the ground. The bullet sank into Rachel’s shoulder. Tobias zoomed through the window. <Drive, drive!> he shouted.

Marco was already pushing the gas pedal. He yanked on the wheel, careening into the street, clipping the white car in front. The white car’s burglar alarm went off.

<Meant to do that,> Marco assured us. <Distraction.> He clipped a trash can on the other side of the road.

<Did you mean to do that?> Rachel asked drily.

Marco managed to get his big gorilla fingers around the seat control and push it back as far as it would go. It was a tight fit in the van. A gorilla and a grizzly aren’t exactly van-sized, and adding a tiger and a leopard into the mix doesn’t help. Ax was already morphing back to harrier to take up less space, but the rest of us couldn’t demorph in front of David.

Bullets bounced off the back of the van. I tried to take up as little space as possible and hoped the van could take our weight.

Marco clipped a pole. The whole van leapt right with the impact. Marco didn’t slow down at all.

More sirens were blaring in the distance.

<Aaaaah!> I screamed mentally as we wildly careened across the whole of the street.

<Look out!> Jake shouted. <Lookoutlookoutlookoutlookout!>

<Would you both shut up?> Marco demanded. <I’m trying to drive here!>

<Car! Car! Car!> Tobias yelled.

Marco swerved, mounted the curb and tore through someone’s garden. Luckily there were no trees in their yard. The van hit road again with a _thunk!_ A driver blared their horn, flipping us the bird through their open window.

<That was rude,> Marco said calmly, <and totally uncalled for.>

BAM!

<Aaaaah!>

<It’s just a trash can,> Marco said irritably, struggling to move properly even with the seat pushed all the way back. <Chill out.>

BAM! BAM! BAM!

<Okay, so it’s four trash cans,> Marco corrected.

<Get off the pavement, you lunatic!> Rachel shouted.

We swerved right. We bumped off the pavement, grazed a parked car, and…

BAM! BAM! BAM!

<Do you hate trash cans?> Jake asked. <Is that your problem? Do you just HATE TRASH CANS?!!>

<I can’t drive with you screaming in my head,> Marco pointed out.

<You can’t drive at all!> Rachel screamed.

The sirens were getting very close.

<We need an exit!> Jake shouted.

<Left!> Tobias said. <The roads open that way, they’ll have a harder time cornering you! Let me out so I can navigate!>

Marco reached over to open the passenger door. Tobias and Ax flew out.

<I don’t see how open roads are going to help us in this super recogniseable car,> Rachel pointed out, <especially with our friend here who can’t morph!>

I glanced at David. He’d laid himself on the floor of the car, head tucked against his chest, hands protecting the back of his neck, knees pulled up to protect his stomach. He was trembling. He wasn’t reacting at all to Marco’s insane driving. Shock?

<Left again!> Tobias called from the air.

Marco swung left, across another lawn. This one had a hedge. It had somewhat less hedge once we were done, and our stolen car had acquired a bonus length of garden hose.

<I’m going to kill you, Marco,> Jake said, weirdly calm. <If I survive, I’m gonna kill you.>

<Hey, you try driving with big gorilla hands and feet!>

<Guys, to your right is an underground carpark, doesn’t look very full.>

We pulled right. There was one of those wooden pole things to stop vehicles. The armoured van plowed right through it.

<Ax, how much time has passed since I last asked?> Jake asked.

<Ten of your minutes, Prince Jake.>

<Dammit, we’re going to be late.>

<You’re still worried about school?!> Rachel bellowed.

<Yes. So should you be. Okay, uh… Marco, you’re playing hooky today; Cassie, you’re all traumatised from the forest thing. Rachel, you and me need to get to class, or else our entire group is missing while this very valuable kid is being very obviously rescued from Controllers.>

<Screw that,> Rachel said. <I’m Cassie’s best friend. I’m taking her shopping to get her over her forest trauma thing.>

<… Fine,> Jake said. <I, uh… I guess I’d better go th – >

<Nope, I arranged a secret date between you two today to cheer her up,> Rachel said. <Even Mister Responsibility takes time out to help a friend, right?>

<See, this is why you shouldn’t go to class so much,> Marco said. <It sets expectations. For the sake of humanity, you are obliged to play hooky with me sometimes.>

Once we got into the car park, David scrambled up to peek out of one of the windows. We had not, of course, included him in our conversation. “What now?” he asked shakily.

<Now,> Jake told him calmly, <we ditch this vehicle, put on new faces and figure out how to get you out of here.>

“Figure out? There’s no _plan_?”

<We weren’t expecting to get ambushed in the alley,> Marco growled, slamming the brakes and jarring all of us forward into the seats.

<Let me see your hands and feet,> I told David, loping forward. My leopard eyes weren’t the best in the dim park, but I could clearly see where the ropes had cut into his wrists and ankles. I resisted the urge to lick the wounds. At least his circulation seemed to have improved.

<We thought we were safe for now,> Jake said. <Sorry.>

David hugged his hands to his chest. “That was my dad. My dad shot at me.”

We were silent for a few seconds.

<I’m sorry,> I eventually said.

Marco glanced at David. <Do you understand what happened to your father?>

“Sort of,” David said, looking away.

<Guys, if you’re getting out of there, do it now,> Tobias called, his voice distant.

<Everyone break up,> Jake ordered. <Human morphs we used on the underwater base. Tobias, what’s this carpark connected to?>

<A supermarket, I think, and – >

<Good enough. We’re all going shopping, come on.>

We all moved to locations where David couldn’t see us to put on our human half-morphs. There was still a chance he could be captured, and if he was, we didn’t want memories of us turning from battle morphs directly to humans to fall into yeerk minds.

We walked through the supermarket, four similar-looking kids in spandex and one beat-up fugitive, ready for a Controller to recognise David and call out at any moment. Nothing. It seemed like we’d had a decent head start.

“Eventually somebody’s going to figure out the spandex thing,” Marco muttered to me. “At the worst possible time. We’ll be walking along and somebody will shout, ‘Spandex! They’re there, in the spandex! Like always!’”

“I’m more worried about David right now,” I muttered back. “He has to be freaking out. Anybody would be freaking out.”

Rachel had David’s hand firmly in her own. Rachel could be extremely protective, and David looked just a bit calmer, walking beside her. Jake moved at the front of the group, trying to look casual while he scanned for threats. I didn’t like looking at my friends half-morphed. They looked… off. I was used to Ax’s human morph being a mix of all of us, but seeing Jeremy Jason McCole’s lips or Marco’s hair on Jake looked weird. The spandex didn’t help.

We left the supermarket. We caught a bus. Nobody stopped us.

We got off at the furthest stop out of town, near the forest but not too close to my house. I morphed Midnight so that David could ride me into the forest. I tried to ignore the heartache that welled in me as I did so. Midnight had been a good horse, and I’d gone and gotten her legs broken. Jake and Rachel moved beside us as wolves, ready to meet any threats.

David clung far too tightly to my mane with trembling hands, his knees cinching into my sides. I didn’t complain. I was just happy that he knew how to ride a horse. I was amazed that he was holding himself together at all, but I supposed that desperation could do some amazing things. How had we handled meeting Elfangor, hearing about the invasion, watching him die? How had we handled our first mad dash for our lives?

It was so long ago. The Cassie that had lived through that had been an entirely different Cassie to the one making her way to Ax’s scoop. She had been overwhelmed at the very concept of aliens, she had been paralysed with fear over her own life, she had lived in a small world of grades and family and animals that needed help. How would she have reacted to anything that had just happened?

<Are you alright?> I asked David. He gave a sort of hollow chuckle.

<I think the danger’s passed,> Jake said, including David in the announcement. <Those of you in the sky, how are we looking?>

<Clear, so far as I can tell,> Tobias said. <I don’t think anyone followed you into the car park; not until you were out, anyway.>

“They had the police on their side,” David muttered.

<Yeah,> Jake said. <They have a lot of people.>

“My dad was there.”

<I’m sorry,> Jake said.

“Sure you are,” David muttered.

Jake ignored that. <We’ll be able to rest soon,> he said. <Then we can catch up properly.>

I’d only been up for a couple of hours, but already, rest sounded pretty good.


	7. Chapter 7

I was used to flying to the scoop. Walking to it took forever. By the time the trees opened up to reveal Ax’s clearing, David wasn’t shaking so much. I stopped and he dismounted, falling over immediately.

There we stood awkwardly in the open clearing, a few steps from an alien’s house; a horse, two wolves, a handful of birds, and a bewildered kid. He looked at each of us as he climbed to his feet.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m willing to accept that you’re the good guys here. Those freaks threatened me and took my dad and that one guy wanted to kill me. You guys say you’re here to protect us, and I have no reason to believe that, but frankly I’m a bit low on options here. So, what now?”

<We need you to tell us where the _escafil_ device is, > Ax said immediately.

<Then we can get you out of here,> Rachel said. <We have people in place. Humans. They can get you out of town, safe, while we deal with this invasion.>

“And my dad?”

We had no answer to that.

“They’ll have my mom, too, right? Would she try to shoot me if she saw me?”

<It isn’t them,> I told him. <It’s the yeerks controlling them. Your parents would never – >

“I know what my parents would and would never do,” David snapped. “What I want to know is, how are you going to help them?”

<We’re going to help every human caught in this war,> Jake promised, not mentioning the ones we’d already maimed and killed.

David laughed sourly. “Oh, you are, are you? How about we talk about my parents _specifically_ , though?”

<It is our goal to free all humans,> Jake said stubbornly.

“Eventually, I’m sure. But for now, you’re just going to leave them, aren’t you?”

Marco mentally sighed. <Look, kid, it sucks that your family got caught up in this. Really. But there are hundreds of moms and dads out there that we need to free, and we can’t do that if the yeerks get their hands on andalite tech, capische? We are going to do everything we can for your parents, and I really hope they can come join you soon, but for now – >

“For now, you need my help,” David said, crossing his arms. “And I need yours. And don’t even try to make me talk. My dad works for the secret service. I know the tricks.”

<You’re pulling this?> Rachel asked. <Seriously?>

“ _I’m_ pulling this? Sorry, are we having different conversations here? Because it sounds to me like you aliens brought _your_ war to _my_ planet and put my people in danger, and you say you’re trying to defend us but somehow _you’ve_ misplaced _your_ technology and destroyed _my_ life and now you want my help to clean up your mess. And you’re telling me, what, you’ll try to fix things up later? Who says you’re going to be alive later? I’ve only been here for about an hour but it really doesn’t look to me like you have yourselves all that together here. No, you know what; I’ll help you clean up your mess. That’s fine. But you’re cleaning all of it up. That’s my condition. You want your toy, I want my family. Sounds pretty fair to me.”

<I don’t think you understand quite what’s going on here,> Marco said – a touch too aggressively, I thought. <The yeerks are a menace, an interstellar plague. Body snatchers. Do you understand? They’re slugs, big gooey slugs the size of rats, and they squeeze their body into your ear, drilling right into your brain where they flatten out and take over your nerves. They can read every thought, every emotion, every memory. Every hug and smile with your family, every important secret, your locker combination – all weapons to turn on your family and your planet. They control everything you do, everything you say, and we are barely holding on, and if they get that box it’s all over, do you understand? They win, and they’ll put one of themselves inside you. Is that what you want?>

We Animorphs all kind of stared at him.

<Um,> I said to him privately, <are you okay?>

<Just making sure he knows the stakes,> he replied.

But David merely raised his eyebrows. “So what you’re saying,” he said, “is that it’s really important that we save both of my parents right away. Saving one of my parents in exchange for your cube is a good starting point, don’t you think?”

There was a slight pause while we all tried to think of something to say to that.

<Excuse us a moment,> Jake said, and switched to Animorph-only thought-speak. <Okay, thoughts?>

<He makes a good point,> I conceded.

<I like his guts,> Marco said. <Don’t trust him, though. How do we know this isn’t part of the trap? This kid doesn’t seem on the up-and-up to me.>

<He’s had a pretty rough day,> I pointed out.

<This may be time-sensitive,> Ax said. <Depending on where he has hidden the _escafil_ device, the yeerks may be able to find it without him. If we are agreeing to this demand, we must do so quickly. >

<We don’t have time for this,> Jake muttered.

<But we do need his information,> Tobias pointed out. <Besides, we need to smuggle him out of town afterwards, right?>

<So?> Rachels asked.

<So how exactly are we going to stop him from coming back to rescue his parents on his own?>

<He wouldn’t,> Marco said. <Nobody would do something that dumb.>

<The Star Defenders are still in town,> Rachel said.

<And, I hate to bring this up,> Tobias said, <but wasn’t our very first mission a blind charge into the yeerk pool to rescue our Fearless Leader’s brother?>

It’s pretty easy for a wolf to look embarrassed, and Jake was very good at it. He didn’t look at Tobias. It was also pretty easy, I supposed, to read Tobias’ comment as an accusation – that had, after all, been how Tobias had been trapped in morph – but I was sure Tobias didn’t intend it that way. He meant what he said – put some kid in unknown danger and give the people closest to him to the enemy, and who was to say he wouldn’t charge headlong forward to rescue them?

David had already been around us too much for me to be comfortable with the thought of yeerks having access to his memories. And if they got him before we found the _escafil_ device, well, that would be disastrous.

<We have to find a way to do it, don’t we?> I said reluctantly.

<I’m all for freeing up some humans,> Rachel said, flexing her huge wolf paws.

<Everyone else?>

<This is way too much of a risk,> Marco said. <We find the info some other way. Or we talk to him. I’m sure we can convince him that the fate of the world matters.>

I didn’t point out that Marco hadn’t been entirely on board until his mother was involved. It seemed harsh, after he’d drowned her in the ocean for the good of the rest of us.

<I don’t think we have a choice,> Tobias said.

<It is very high risk,> Ax said, <but it is absolutely vital that we prevent the _escafil_ device from falling into yeerk hands. >

<That’s a majority,> Jake said. He turned his attention back to David. <In exchange for this information, we will free your parents,> he promised him.

<For the record, I still think this is a trap,> Marco said openly. <If he actually had the cube, the yeerks would have infested him. It has to be a fake. Calling it now: trap.>

David nodded. “That’s what the guy who caught me said,” he said.

<What?>

“He said they should have infested me days ago, but they thought it was an andalite trap. When he was threatening me.”

<Wait a minute,> Rachel said. <They thought we were trapping them?>

<It’s pretty good bait for a trap,> Tobias pointed out. <Something the yeerks would really want.>

“He said the bait was unrealistic. That there was no reason for something like that to even be on Earth.”

We all shuffled and tried not to look suspicious.

<Okay,> Jake said, <so either that guy wasn’t in on the trap, or this is real. We have two missions to plan now: rescuing David’s parents, and getting this cube. So. David, do we have a deal? Will you tell us where the _escafil_ device is? >

David nodded. “Yeah. I’ll tell you.”


	8. Chapter 8

<They’re going to know this is a trap,> Marco pointed out. <It’s really, really obviously a trap.> He hunkered down further, trying to hide his bulk behind a van.

<Yeah, but they’ll have no choice but to go for it anyway,> Rachel replied. She was an elephant for this mission, or would be when she no longer needed to hide. For the moment, she was a half-morphed, pseudo-elephantine mass. <The prize is too valuable. Sound familiar?>

<Yes, yes, I understand the irony.>

<Is that irony?> Jake wondered. Despite being bright orange, it’s actually a lot easier for a tiger to blend in in an urban setting than you’d think. He was practically invisible.

“Does it matter?” I asked out loud, my new male voice unnerving me. “And for the record, I’m sick of being the damsel in distress. Why am I the one always getting captured?”

<You won’t get captured,> Jake reassured me. <That’s why we’re here.>

“That’s sweet, Jake, but let’s be real. I am definitely going to get captured.” I pulled David’s hood up, cleared my throat, and walked towards the payphone. I still wasn’t sure why this part was my job. Sure, I might be able to read people okay, but I was no actor. Hopefully, David’s vocal cords would to most of the work for me.

I dialled the number I’d scrawled on my wrist, and waited.

A male voice answered. Weary. “Hello?”

“Dad?”

Sudden attention. “David? Are you alright? What happened?”

“What happened? You were there!” I let myself sob. “Some guy grabbed me and threatened me and there were trained animals, you saw, you shot one! Dad, what’s going on?!”

A slight pause. “Nobody told you anything?”

“Told me what? Some guy was ranting about secrets and then there were the animals… I got away, but Dad, I’m scared. I don’t know where I am, they’re going to find me soon and – ”

“David, listen to me. Stay right where you are. I’m coming for you, alright? I’ll bring a whole army with me if I have to. You’ll be fine. Just stay there.”

“What’s going on?”

“I’ll explain later. It’s a government thing. Don’t panic. Be safe, alright? And if they try to grab you again, run.” He hung up.

<Okay,> I told everyone, <I think he bought it, maybe. He’s coming.>

<Probably with an army,> Jake said grimly. <Everyone, be ready.>

I exited the phone box and stood where I could be easily seen from the road. We’d chosen a phone on the edge of town, with enough cover for the battle-ready Animorphs but not much more than that. There were houses, run-down; mostly abandoned.

This was not a plan that I liked. We’d had our own ambushes turned on us too many times before, and this time, I wouldn’t even be able to fight. I was trapped in David morph for the duration as I couldn’t very well demorph in front of Controllers. I had the newly stolen Dracon beam hidden under my hoodie, but I was no marksman. If it came down to a tooth-and-claw battle, I wouldn’t be able to fire for fear of hitting an Animorph. If I managed to hit anyone at all.

The real David was, of course, still in Ax’s meadow, far from the danger. We had no scouts in the sky. Even with a new bird morph, it would make the Controllers too suspicious. No animal life was visible except me, a scared-looking teenage boy hanging out by a pay phone in the middle of the morning.

The cars pulled up. Five of them. Armoured.

Windows were wound partly down. Guns were pointed out of them.

David’s father climbed out of the middle car and ran for me, arms spread wide, ready to sweep his son into a hug.

<Now,> I said.

A gorilla bellowed. Two hork-bajir shouted. I ducked into the phone booth as for the second time that day the air was full of gunshots and Dracon fire, David’s father piling in next to me. The way he moved, I supposed that David had been telling the truth about him being in the secret service. I reminded myself that this was a yeerk, piloting an innocent man’s body. The way he protectively shielded my form with his own was because the yeerk thought I was valuable. That was all.

“You were followed,” he said. The suspicion was clear in his voice. “They told you nothing about what was going on?”

I shook my head. “I only saw all the animals,” I said. “Who trains a bear?!”

“Doesn’t matter. We need to get you out of here.” He put his arms around my waist and lifted me.

While his arms were occupied, I reached under my shirt and drew the Dracon beam.

He reacted immediately, dropping me, reaching for the gun. Too late.

I shot him squarely in the chest.


	9. Chapter 9

David’s father immediately slumped over, unconscious. I shuddered. I hated Dracon beams. They were even worse than normal guns, because they had power settings. Handling a Dracon beam was like forever wondering if you’d left the oven on, except instead of a risk of a fire in an empty house, there was a risk of accidentally incinerating someone.

<Got him,> I said.

<Good. Just let us clean up here.>

I kept low while the battle raged around me. It wasn’t too long before the door was torn from the phone booth by a gorilla. Marco grabbed me and our unconscious quarry and tossed one of us over each shoulder. <Time to go, Rachel’s almost out of cars to smash,> Marco said.

RRROOOOOWRR!

Rachel was, indeed, almost out of cars to smash. The Controllers had been forced out of the vehicles under the threat of crushing and were now spread across various front yards, ducking behind fences, where Tobias, Jake and Ax (who was a harrier to avoid any alien sightings) were harrassing and distracting them while Rachel finished off their cars. But she wasn’t the main target at that moment; the gorilla absconding with the Controller and the boy with the important secrets was. I gripped Marco’s shaggy fur with unfamiliar fingers while he took one, two leaping bounds forward… and then a large chunk of Marco’s torso wasn’t there any more.

Marco collapsed forward.

<Marco!> Jake cried. Behind us, Rachel screamed in rage and tossed a trash can at the firing Controller.

<I’m fine,> Marco grunted, clearly lying.

I kicked my way out from under Marco’s splayed arm and scrambled to my feet. One look at the battlefield told me exactly what would happen. We had to retreat, we had to; but the Controllers wouldn’t let David – me – go.

We would retreat, and David’s father (who was groaning and beginning to stir) would try to grab me, and in the valuable time it took us to make our escape, Marco would be killed by the pursuing Controllers. He was lying on the ground, a clear target. Too far from Rachel to be carried, too big for anyone else. We couldn’t retreat without losing him.

We had to make them retreat.

Dammit.

David’s father tried to stumble to his feet. I kicked him hard in the side of the knee and heard something crack. Then I turned and ran.

I ran toward the Controllers.

I ran in the direction the shot had come from, putting myself between whoever had aimed for Marco and their mark. Nobody was going to risk shooting me to take another shot at him. The secrets in David’s brain were worth more than the poor yeerk that would be starved out of his father’s head if the man was captured. They were even worth more than making sure an andalite bandit was dead.

An arm reached from behind a tree and grabbed me. I let it.

“My Dad,” I sobbed, “Is he gonna be okay? He was hurt, he – ”

“He’ll be fine,” my ‘rescuer’, a Controller in body armour, grunted. “Let’s get you safe.”

It wasn’t hard to fake distress. I had quite a lot of real distress to deal with. The Controllers scattered, giving Rachel space to pick up Marco and David’s dad, while the man dragged me down a side alley.

<Cassie!> Jake called. <What the hell?>

<I’m fine,> I told him. <Just get Marco healed and get David’s dad out of here.>

He’d want to argue with me, of course. But there wasn’t time. We had morphing limits, they were going to want to get a yeerk in my head as soon as possible, and Marco was going to bleed to death.

Okay, so on the one hand, this was entirely my fault, based on my judgement call.

On the other, I did say I knew I was gonna get captured.


	10. Chapter 10

I knew I was too calm as the Controller pulled me through the streets.

I _should_ be distressed. It was a distressing situation. I was on a morphing clock, the yeerks wanted to infest me, I was trapped for now in the body of a teenager and if I blew my cover things would get even more dangerous. But I’d spent so long hiding distress from everyone in my life that actually acting freaked out was difficult.

Besides, logically, it was hard to tell how much danger I was in. If they found out who I was, or if they kept me under surveillance, the situation might be difficult, but all I needed to escape was a few minutes alone.

Fortunately, the Controller wasn’t paying much attention to me so long as I followed without a fight. He pulled me into a house and ducked the baseball bat swung at him by an emaciated-looking woman.

“Get out of my house, you – !”

The Controller gave a subtle hand sign. Her eyes widened and she dropped the bat.

“Andalites might be following,” the man said rapidly. “Visser is on his way. Hide us and keep a lookout.”

“Pantry is the best I got for you,” the woman said, pointing and picking up the bat again. “I’ll scream and play innocent if they show up.”

I was pulled into a pantry. The Controller who had pulled me through the streets turned to take a good look at me.

Right, right. I had a character to play. Did I look like I was in shock? Maybe? Shock should work.

“What about my dad?” I asked.

“We’ll rescue him from the animals, don’t worry,” the Controller said soothingly. He glanced at the closed pantry door. “Actually, we need your help with that.”

“My help?”

“You found something, right? A blue box. It’ll help us save him.”

I nodded. “I hid it.”

“Where?”

“Don’t tell Dad?”

“I promise.”

I swallowed. My voice was already starting to do that high-pitched, fakey thing it did when I had to lie unprepared. Would he notice?

“Dad’s gun safe,” I whispered. “I hid it right in the back of the safe.”

Triumph glittered in the man’s eyes. “Good. You’ve helped us a lot today, David. I’m sure your dad will be fine. I just have to make a phone call, okay? Stay right here. Soon we’ll get you to my boss. Mr Visser, and he can protect you while we rescue your dad.”

I nodded. The Controller left the pantry, slamming the door behind him in his excitement. I heard him call out to the woman. “Where’s your phone?”

It was now or never. I closed my eyes and focused.

Human morphs are always really easy. Nothing major changes – some colours, some bone lengths, some fat and muscle distribution. I shrank inside David’s clothing, resumed my normal form, and kept shrinking. No time to rest between morphs – I could hear the Controller on the phone.

“Yes, I’ve got the kid, he’s right here, but tell Etin that it’s in the gun safe.”

My skin hardened into chitin. My mouth shrank to nearly nothing.

“Yes, the one at the house. I don’t know why Tano didn’t find it. You can ask him if we ever see him again.”

A pair of extra legs, long and spindly, sprouted from my torso. The chitin on my back lifted slightly as wings assembled themselves underneath.

“The combination? Can’t you just cut it open?”

I shrank further. Two long antennae sprouted from my forehead.

“Yeah, yeah, safety of the device. Fine. I’ll ask.”

I threw everything I had into morphing as quickly as possible. It wasn’t enough. The Controller opened the pantry door, and with my still-human, uncloseable eyes, I saw his horrified expression. I must have looked pretty gross, a wild combination of roach parts and miscellaneous fleshy parts there on the floor tangled in a bunch of clothes. But the implications were even more horrifying – if I was an andalite bandit, where was David? How would Visser Three react when he arrived?

“Nooo!” the man wailed, stomping wildly at me, trying to crush me underfoot. I launched my mostly-morphed body under some shelves, got all my roach legs lined up, zoomed behind some cans.

“But spray! Get me bug spray!”

Chaos.

I had to get out of there before the whole pantry was doused. I zoomed up a wall, found a tiny slatted window, dropped out of it into a rose bush. Easy escape.

I was completely lost, of course.

I took to the air, looking for something big enough to hide me while I morphed again. It was difficult to do as a roach. Cockroaches have advantages but great visions isn’t one of them, and my little roach brain was freaking out about being in daylight. It would’ve been quite hard to control if I were still in the pantry, but out in the open, there weren’t too many dark crevices I had the urge to run to, so long as I forced myself away from the rose bush.

<Is everyone okay?> I called to the Animorphs.

<Cassie!> Tobias. <Where are you? Are you alright?>

<I’m fine, aside from not knowing the answer to your first question. I’m a roach looking for somewhere to get better eyes. Forget me; is Marco okay?>

<Fine. And our new friend is all tied up in that abandoned house we picked out, hidden away where the yeerks can’t find him. Rachel’s watching him. There are too many Controllers around to move him now, but we have mission number two.>

<We’re going for the box?>

<We’re going for the box. Jake’s gone to get the location from David as we speak.>

<Any advice on finding somewhere to demorph? Roach eyes are not great.>

<Get low over the road. Find a storm drain. One without a grate or anything.>

<Thanks.>

I took Tobias’ advice. It turned out not to be ideal advice, as a red-tailed hawk is somewhat smaller than a teenage girl, and the drain pressed me on all sides as I demorphed, crushing me. I ignored it. I could breathe. I’d heal.

Although getting out wasn’t exactly easy, either. Seagulls do not climb out of drains very well. I made a mental note not to take Tobias’ morphing advice at face value so quickly next time.

The streets were more populated than they had been when we’d started the mission. People casually strode down them – harassed mothers dragging children, tired-looking men in third-hand jackets, teenagers with walkmans. They looked normal enough; only from the sky was it obvious that they were moving in search patterns. But they didn’t seem too enthusiastic about it.

<I don’t get the feeling that David’s dad is very important to them,> I said.

<They’re probably only here for David,> Tobias replied. <And I guess they already know there’s no way we would have brought him here. Do they look scared to you?>

<That Controller who grabbed me said Visser Three was on his way,> I said. <Somehow I don’t think anyone here is looking forward to explaining that they don’t have David after all.>

Despite their fear, it was the shoddiest search I’d ever seen. The Controllers weren’t even checking the sky for us. I supposed that they figured we had no reason to stick around. Did they realise that David’s father had been our target? Was trading a family member’s safety for information something that a group of andalites would even do?

Tobias and I easily fluttered through an open back window into the house where we were holding David’s father.

The house was clearly abandoned; dust and mould sat thick on various surfaces. There was very little furniture, although a sinking couch had been left behind; this had been moved to the laundry, a confined room with only one easily-blocked window at the back of the house. The couch took up the entire laundry, and our captive was lying on it, gagged and bound hand and foot. Rachel sat on her haunches in the hallway, a wolf – a fairly understated morph for Rachel. She must be trying to keep David’s father calm. I felt a pang of affection for her.

He moved to glare at us. Rachel growled.

I considered trying to comfort either of the prisoners, yeerk or human, but what could I say? _Ha ha, you’re going to starve to death soon? Sorry for your family getting caught in an alien war?_

<David is fine,> I told them.

It was only just starting to hit me what we were about to do. After all the worry about traps and false bait and wondering what the yeerks did or didn’t know… this was the real deal. We wanted it. The yeerks wanted it. It was the actual morphing cube. Elfangor’s blue box. The _escafil_ device.

It was so, so frustrating that even if everything went perfectly, we’d never be able to use it. Ax would make absolutely sure of that. It was worse than the Pemalite Crystal mission, because at least we had given the chee the option of using the supercomputer we’d all nearly died to retrieve.

War’s not fair, I guess.

We waited. A couple of times, a patrolling Controller circled the shut-up house, and one of us put teeth or claws to David’s father’s throat until they left. Ax and Marco showed up after the patrols stopped.

We couldn’t really relax in the house. We didn’t want David’s father to see or hear anything suspicious, and that meant no lounging about in human form. Only Ax and Tobias could really be themselves.

We were going to have to demorph soon to avoid being trapped anyway. That in itself was worrying. Jake shouldn’t be taking so long.

<He’s just getting a location, right?> I asked Tobias. <Then he can just fly back, can’t he?>

<You don’t think he’s hit trouble?> Tobias asked.

<He would’ve sent for help,> Rachel pointed out.

<It’s a fair trip. Maybe he couldn’t reach us.>

<We should send someone after him,> I said.

<Can’t neglect our Fearless Leader,> Marco agreed. <I’ll take Rachel and Ax; Cassie and Tobias should keep an eye on Mr Secret Service here.>

<Excuse me, you’ll take us?> Rachel asked belligerently. <Who put you in charge all of a sudden?>

<Do you guys have to do this now?> Tobias asked.

But the debate was cut short by a peregrine falcon sailing through the window.

<Jake! You’re okay!> I hopped toward him, then stopped. What was I going to do, hug him with my wings?

<Cassie! You’re okay! I mean, obviously you’d be okay, I knew you could get away from that guy, I just… Ax, you have hands, can you open the back door?>

Ax went to do what he was told.

<Uh, why are we opening the door?> Marco asked.

The answer was soon obvious, as Ax lead David to the laundry. David was wearing what I recognised as Jake’s old clothes; the set of clothes we’d rescued him in had been left behind in the Controller woman’s pantry. The blood drained from his face as soon as he saw his father. “Dad!”

<He’s fine,> Jake said quickly. <Don’t let him shout for help. The yeerk is still in control.>

<The yeerk will die in three days,> I told David, including his father in the conversation in case he didn’t know. <They need to leave their hosts to feed every now and again.> To David’s father and the yeerk in his head, I added privately, <I’m sorry.>

David, to his credit, did a lot less freaking out than I probably would’ve done if I’d found my alien-controlled father tied up on my first day of dealing with aliens. He checked the circulation in his hands and feet and looked him over for any serious injuries.

I decided not to mention that I’d stunned the man in the chest with a laser weapon.

<Why did you bring him?> Marco asked Jake, leaving David out of the conversation.

<He insisted on seeing his father. Besides.> Jake opened his thought-speak. <David says we’ll need him to guide us personally to the _escafil_ device. >

Satisfied that his father was okay, David whispered something comforting to him and stood back. He nodded. “It’s a bit complicated to get to, and I kind of… I don’t know how much I’ll remember without seeing it.”

<Seriously?> Marco moaned. <Are we going into a hedge maze or something? A scavenger hunt?>

David shook his head. “But, you know, there’s lots of crevices and rooms and stuff.”

<Where did you even hide this thing, that the Controllers can’t find it?>

David raised his eyebrows. “I hid it in the same place I found it, of course. That old abandoned construction site across from the mall.”


	11. Chapter 11

I didn’t like going to the construction site. Too many bad memories. It was impossible to walk through without thinking _ah, yes, that was where Tobias paused to point out Elfangor’s ship in the sky. There’s that bit of rubble we cowered behind while the War-Prince was eaten. Here is where I rammed a bulldozer into a spaceship to try to stop Rachel from being killed_.

It didn’t help that the place was well and truly claimed by yeerks, and here we were, a handful of teenagers, most wearing spandex and one of whom was very, very wanted by the Empire.

It was mid-afternoon. School had been let out. We cut through the bottom level of the mall, seven human and human-looking kids, all trying to look like we had ordinary lives and ordinary concerns. Because David was there, we were wearing our half-morphed human disguises, which made the whole thing feel sort of alien even if I could ignore the way Tobias walked stiffly and started at everything, or how Ax stumbled and kept staring longingly at anything other mall-goers were eating. Marco visibly flinched as we walked past the arcade. “Sleaze Troll comes right after the Nether Fjord,” he muttered under his breath, apparently to himself. I didn’t bother prying into what that was supposed to mean.

We crossed the road, populated mall behind us, lonely abandoned site ahead. That hole was still in the fence, the one that every kid used to cut across the construction site. Jake held the wire up for the rest of us before ducking under himself.

“Okay, David,” he said, “you’re up.”

David took the lead. We followed. Right towards the spot where Elfangor had died. Tobias stared up at the sky as he walked. Jake and Marco whispered about which superhero would win some stupid fight, their normal response to nervousness; Rachel shushed them, and from their expressions I assumed they were continuing in thought-speak. I ignored them. I was trying to listen for any random Controllers who might recognise David or simply not like a bunch of potential teenage witnesses wandering around.

In the light of the day, you could still sort of see the scorch marks where the yeerks had cleaned up the wreckage of Elfangor’s ship.

We didn’t pause.

David led us into a half-ruined shop are where a lot of the walls had gone up before the site had been abandoned. I could see why he felt he needed to be there. It looked identical to half a dozen other half-constructed, half-ruined shop areas; trying to describe where to go would have been impossible.

“I was poking around and found a basement level down here,” he whispered. It felt like a whispering sort of situation. He pulled open a hatch in the floor.

We headed down. The stairs were not particularly sturdy, so I kept an eye on David, ready to catch him if he slipped. For the rest of us, of course, it didn’t really matter.

“I thought there’d be homeless people down here or something, but it’s all abandoned.” David grabbed a piece of the thin panelling that lined the walls of the basement and pulled it aside. “I kicked this in, and there’s a bunch of dirt and rocks and stuff that’s fallen in from above. I found the cube here.”

“So you put it back here?” Ax asked, unable to conceal the eagerness in his tone.

He shook his head. “After you guys searched my house I decided to hide it better. I put it in deeper.

“Deeper?” I asked. “What do you – ”

A change in the light. Somebody was standing at the top of the basement stairs.

A little girl, dressed in tattered clothes with only one shoe. She stared at us for a few seconds, then turned and ran.

“Tour’s over,” Marco hissed. “Let’s cut to the end part and get the cube!”

“It’s just a little girl,” David said reasonably.

“Haven’t you been listening to anything we’ve said?” Marco snapped. “Anyone can be a Controller! You think it’s just grown-ups? That girl recognised you; she looked right at you, and if she knows who you are then it doesn’t take a genius to figure out who we must be! If she’s one of them, she’ll bring seven-foot-tall aliens covered in blades! Do you want to deal with that?”

David looked like he wanted to respond, but seemed to decide it wasn’t worth it. He kicked at the rubble in the wall, revealing a crevice.

“In here,” he said, squeezing through and disappearing.

Only when he turned on a small flashlight did it become clear what had happened. The hole in the basement wall led to another basement for the neighbouring shop, and the hole had been mostly filled in with rubble pouring through some crack above. Marco and Tobias squeezed their way through. Jake eyed the hole and started to dig a little more rubble away with his hands – his half-morph disguise was shorter than his real body, but he was still the biggest of us.

“I’ll wait for you guys out here,” Rachel said. “Keep lookout in case Controllers come.”

“We’d hide better together,” Jake pointed out.

“And you shouldn’t be here alone,” I added. “I’ll stay with you.”

“No… no. You they might need you. I’ll give a shout if I see anyone.”

Jake scrambled through the hole. I frowned at Rachel. I couldn’t see much of her in the low light, and her half-morphed face looked strange at the best of times, but she was definitely nervous. She wasn’t looking at me, and she bounced on the balls of her feet, as if she really wanted to be pacing.

“What are you frightened of?” I asked quietly.

“I’m not frightened!” she snapped. “I’m just prepared to fight. We can’t fight all wedged in a dark space, can we?” She swallowed.

I lowered my voice further. “Rachel, are you claustrophobic?”

She rolled her eyes. “Cassie, you’ve known me for years, have I ever been scared of walls?”

“No.” I thought. “Actually, yeah. Lately.”

“You girls coming or not?” Marco called.

“I’m coming. Rachel will stand guard – ”

“No!” Rachel grabbed my hand and set her jaw. Her grip was far too tight to be casual. “I’m coming. I’m fine.”

We probably didn’t have time to argue. I scrambled through the gap, and pulled her through after me.

The only real source of light in the room was David’s flashlight.

“Why do you even have a flashlight?” Tobias asked.

“It was in my schoolbag,” he said with a shrug. “I knew we were coming here. Seemed useful.”

“You take a flashlight to school?”

“Um, yes?”

The basement was mostly empty. Some timber had been stacked in one corner; old building materials, covered in dust and cobwebs. The stairs were in a worse state than the stairs of the previous basement, and the door to the above level blocked with what looked like slabs of fallen concrete. Rachel’s grip was crushing my hand.

Careful not to disturb the cobwebs, David reached behind the stacked timbers and withdrew a cube, each side slightly larger than a spread palm.

It was the exact shade of blue I remembered, seeming to catch the flashlight and glow softly in the gloom. The corners were rounded, softening the shape as a whole. When the light caught the cubes faces at certain angles, andalite writing glowed on the surface for a moment, making me dizzy; I looked away.

Ax snatched the cube from David’s hands and inspected it closely.

“Okay,” Jake said, “time to – ”

And that’s when I felt it. That sickening wave of murderous hate, of evil. That all-too-familiar telepathic aura.

Visser Three had arrived.


	12. Chapter 12

“Too late,” Marco gibbered. “We are screwed, we are so screwed.”

“No way, we are not going down trapped down here,” Rachel snapped.

“Prince Ja – my Prince, we cannot allow the yeerks to get their hands on the _escafil_ device,” Ax said desperately.

“Can it be destroyed?” Tobias asked.

“With the proper resources, yes. Down here? No.”

“What the hell is going on?” David asked. He looked green. His voice shook. I’d forgotten how much of a shock Visser Three’s aura was the first time. The first time it had happened to the five human Animorphs, we’d had Elfangor to protect us a bit, and when he was gone… well, the terror had helped. The first time it had happened to Ax, he had panicked, and eventually dropped into the cool, dispassionate soldier mode that his training had taught him. And David…

David got angry.

It wasn’t the furious terror of Rachel, not really. His face twisted into a snarl. He stood straighter. I could read a declaration in his posture: _How dare you make me feel this way?!_

“We’re trying to escape,” Jake said tersely. “If you have any ideas, I’m open.”

“Elephant,” Rachel growled. “I’ll pull this whole damn basement down, that flimsy roof is nothing. You guys shelter under me and don’t get crushed.”

“And then, what, you’ll be all nice and exposed for the Dracon beams?” Marco asked tersely.

“Could an elephant climb out of this cellar if the roof were gone?” Jake asked me.

“I don’t know!” I snapped. “Why would I know something like that? Ask Rachel!”

“I don’t hear the rest of you coming up with any amazing plans,” Rachel hissed.

<Well, well,> Visser Three’s voice crowed in our heads. <My underlings tell me that I have a nice surprise all buried in our landing site like a fresh _nalgrib_ worm. I am addressing the andalite bandits, yes? It would be so awkward for certain people to have made another mistake of identity. > The last sentence was spoken as a furious threat, not directed at us. <You have nowhere to run, little andalites. The sooner you march up out here and surrender, the less time I will have to ponder just how creative I can make your demise.>

“He’s definitely a Transformers villain,” David hissed through teeth chattering in terror.

“I always thought more Captain Planet,” Marco said, rather more jaded.

“Any plan at all would be great here, guys,” Jake said.

“You think of one!” Rachel snapped. “You’re the leader!”

Jake nodded. “David, turn off the flashlight. No reason to advertise that this second basement exists before they come down and find it themselves.”

No sooner were we in the dark than we heard heavy boots on the stairs in the basement next to ours. A bright spotlight swept back and forth through the first basement. Silently, we all backed against walls. I used the near-complete darkness to demorph, purging the traces of Rachel from my form and settling into my more familiar height and weight distribution. What to be? Wolf to run? Leopard to fight? Bird to dodge? Whatever morphs we picked, we were all going to have to come out of one narrow opening surrounded by Controllers. Suicide.

Insects were out; we had to carry the cube somehow. There would be no quiet, unnoticeable escape. There could be no decent battle, not in our position.

“It’s empty down here, sir,” the Controller called.

<Search the entire landing site!> the Visser snapped. <Do not let them flee! They had the human with them, so they must be retrieving the device!>

I began to relax. Another sweep of the spotlight. This time it lingered on the hole we’d crawled through, still half-filled with rubble.

 _Move on, move on, assume it’s just a damaged wall and move on_. I tried not to move, tried not to breathe. The light came closer.

The angle of the spotlight changed; it had been placed on the floor, pointing at the crevice. We all tensed. I focused on the wolf in me, but I already knew there’d be no time.

A scrabble in the crevice. A head appeared.

“There’s – ”

The cry was cut off as David, being closest to the crevice, stepped forward and kicked the invading Controller in the head.

TSSSEW!

A Dracon beam lanced through the air, bathing the room momentarily in red and revealing the frames of us four combinations of human and nonhuman features, an alien, a bird, and one terrified but determined human figure. David kicked at the wall, heavily, until more rubble poured in, filling the crevice and blocking off the light.

Silence, but for fast, shallow breathing. Rachel scrambled for David’s flashlight and switched it on.

David had been caught in the small cave-in he’d caused to protect us. One leg was buried in dirt, garbage and chunks of concrete. He was pale and sweating, grimacing in pain as he dragged in ragged, shallow breaths. A deep burn lanced from his stomach all the way up his chest and over his left shoulder. The Dracon beam had cut deep enough to bare his ribs, and while it had mostly cauterised its own wound, the moving about and being buried in the rubble had torn the wound in a couple of places so that it oozed trickles of bright blood.

“David,” I whispered, brushing hair back from his face with half-wolf, hairy hands. “Are you alright?”

“Have to be,” he growled. “No way am I going out like this. No way does my family get taken as some side issue by alien invaders and then I get buried in a damn cave-in.”

<Are we escaping or what?> Marco asked. He was enough gorilla to thought-speak, and it was immediately clear why he’d done so. He was excluding David from the conversation.

He had to. Getting out would be extremely difficult. Getting out with the _escafil_ device was laughable. Getting out with the device and David? While he was injured and half-buried?

Impossible.

My eyes automatically strayed to the blue box in Ax’s arms. I wasn’t the only one looking.

<No way,> Marco said. <No. We’re not doing that.>

<He’ll die here,> I pointed out. <He helped us.>

<He won’t die. The yeerks will find him.> But Marco had the grace to sound uncomfortable. Then his tone hardened. <Look, we don’t know this kid. Not really. We know each other, we can trust each other, we can fight together. You want to put all our lives, and our planet, on the line for this one kid? Are we going to risk ourselves for every random Controller-to-be?>

<That is our job,> I told him.

<No, our job is to save the planet. Save as many people as we can. Save – yeah, I’m gonna say it – save our own friends and families. We’re not throwing everything away on a stupid risk.>

<A stupid risk? Have you been paying attention to any mission we’ve been on, ever?>

<It doesn’t matter, anyway. You think Ax is gonna let you do that?> More Controllers were moving around in the basement next to ours. They sounded like they were moving tools around. <We don’t have time to argue over something that’s not going to happen anyway. Let’s get out of here.>

<Vote,> Jake said.

<It doesn’t matter!> Marco argued. <We can’t – >

<Vote,> Jake said tersely, <then argue.>

<I say we save him,> I snapped.

<I say we don’t take stupid risks,> Marco snapped back.

<We should do it,> Rachel said. <We’re fighting a war and there aren’t enough of us. We need firepower. Why not him?>

<I vote with Marco,> Tobias said. <I agree we need help, but… I dunno, I get a bad vibe from this kid. I don’t like what my instincts are telling me.>

And with Tobias’ vote, it was clinched. Ax would vote no, of course; even if Jake voted yes, it would be a tie. Jake wouldn’t go ahead on a tie, not with something like this. I turned away from the semi-conscious David and tried to focus on escaping. The yeerks had started digging away at the rubble.

<I vote yes,> Ax said.

We stared at him.

<I do not know why my brother brought such a dangerous device that he didn’t need so far off our planet,> he said. <I don’t understand why this _escafil_ device was here, on Earth. But… my brother did not give this power to you. He did not know who you were. He gave it to humanity, a weapon to protect yourselves. Laws or not… I believe that my brother chose correctly. >

<That’s that, then.> Jake loped over to David and pulled him into the conversation. <David.>

David twisted his head to look at him.

<I’m so sorry to put you in this position. There’s nothing we can do, though. The yeerks will be through very soon.>

“You’re leaving me behind. Heh, figures.”

<No. We are giving you a choice.>

David frowned, clearly trying to focus.

<The device that you found. It can heal you, give you our shapeshifting powers. Make you one of us, a freedom fighter, one of the team. I hate to ask you this here, now, but – >

“I can fight to save my mom?”

<Yes.>

“To get back at these bastards who ruined my life?”

<Yes.>

He nodded. “I’m in.”

<Ax, Tobias, deal with this. Everyone else, escape plans.>

The basement was becoming confined between the bulk of Marco’s gorilla, Rachel’s bear and Ax’s andalite body. While Ax pressed one of David’s hands to the a face of the cube, Jake loped over to the pile of wood and dug through it until he found a short piece that looked, at the right angle, to be vaguely cubic.

<A decoy’s all well and good, but we have no way of hiding the real thing,> Marco pointed out.

A wave of… pressure… moved through the air, radiating from the cube a few feet behind me. Tobias fluttered onto David’s arm. I eyed the cube. Hide it, hide it… I could morph some small objects, paper and dollar bills and so on, but I had no chance of morphing away that cube. Not knowing what zero-space would do to it was worrying enough, but it would be far too big. I couldn’t do shoes or a pen; there was no way I could stretch my leotard over that and still convince myself that it was my own…

Skin…

And that was when I had a truly awful idea.

I ignored Tobias coaching David through his first morph; they were no help. Jake, too small; Ax, too thin. Marco… even with a gorilla’s bulk, I wouldn’t risk it. No, there was only really one of us with a morph big enough to make my plan work.

I looked at Rachel.

<I have an idea,> I announced. <Some of us are going to have to remorph. And Rachel, I am really, _really_ sorry about this. >


	13. Chapter 13

The Controllers had almost dug through the wall. David’s new red-tailed hawk morph had legs small enough to be pulled easily from the rubble; he was perched on my right shoulder, Tobias on my left. Hork-bajir shoulder blades made much better raptor perches than flesh did.

Jake was a hork-bajir, too. He was free of birds, but instead carried the jacket he’d loaned David, somewhat the worse for wear and tied into a crude bag. Inside the bag was a cube with rounded edges. Hork-bajir blades were very good at carving wood; so long as we kept it inside the jacket, the decoy was very convincing.

Marco had opted for his more familiar gorilla morph, in case we needed the muscle. It was a good idea, but the space in the basement was very tight. This was because most of it was taken up by an elephant.

<I guess we’ll find out if an elephant can climb out of this basement,> Marco remarked.

<I’m sure the stairs will hold,> I said. I was not sure that the stairs would hold.

<Can we just do this already?> Rachel growled.

<Wait for them to break through,> Jake said.

_Crash!_

A good chunk of the rubble was blasted aside, as well as a lot of the wall. I raised my arms to protect the birds as best I could from flying rock. Jake stood in a bright spotlight, jacket-covered decoy hanging from one clawed hand.

Two hork-bajir and three humans, all armed, stared at us.

<Go!> Jake ordered. He tossed the decoy at Marco, who ran up the stairs toward the concrete-blocked door to the outside. Rachel lifted the concrete with her head and Marco scrambled through the opening. A Controller shot at his back; I leapt toward her and slashed the gun from her hands, both birds leaping from my shoulders and flapping for freedom.

“The gorilla’s got – ” another Controller screamed, but Jake was on him.

There were a lot of things we just had to hope would work out in this plan. The first was that when the yeerks realised that we had moved into a second basement, they would not also consider that we might force our way through a bunch of rubble to open an inaccessible door, and also have that door surrounded. If they had considered the concrete-blocked entrance, none of us would get out alive.

But they hadn’t considered it. Marco had been out for a good four seconds before the Dracon fire started up outside. Lucky.

<Tobias?> Jake asked, backing away from an attacking hork-bajir.

<They’ve definitely seen Marco. He has their full attention.>

<Ax, go play keep-away,> Jake said. Ax darted out after Marco.

I’d expected more Controllers to be pouring down the stairs to deal with us. They didn’t. We didn’t really matter, I supposed; not compared to Marco and his little sack.

<Rachel,> Jake said.

<On it!> Rachel trumpeted furiously and charged up the stairs.

The second tricky part of our plan was relying on those stairs to hold the weight of an elephant.

They didn’t. She charged halfway up, pushing her head against the roof to force a hole big enough for her bulk, but stone crumbled and slid beneath her. Undeterred, she reached up through the hole and started dragging chunks of concrete down until the pile of rubble and collapsing stairs was climbable.

Jake and I weren’t having much trouble protecting her. Our enemies were trying to retreat, to deal with the real problem aboveground. We let them.

<Ax is down!> Tobias reported. <Ax is – David, what are you doing here? Go! We’ve got this!>

Jake and I pushed our way past Rachel and out into the open. A little distance away, Ax lay trembling on the ground, a deep burn cut into his flank. The decoy lay feet away from him. Two red-tailed hawks darted among the approaching Controllers, one with rather more skill and precision than the other, trying to slow them while a gorilla charged toward the group.

Jake and I dashed for the decoy, but Ax was already struggling to his feet, already whipping his tail forward to catch the edge of the jacket holding it. As soon as Marco was close enough, Ax flicked his tail, tossing the decoy to Marco. Moments later, Rachel was out and charging forward, head down, barrelling towards the Controllers. They scattered.

<I’ll join the game,> Jake said. <You go with Rachel.>

The whole thing was like a ridiculous game of football. The decoy moved from Animorph to Animorph, but there was no way the Controllers would let it leave the construction site. I raced to catch up with Rachel while she charged forward, clearing a path, only to be mostly ignored. For once, we were fighting an enemy whose highest priority wasn’t killing or capturing us. It was nice to just be an obstacle rather than the goal for once.

With Tobias providing information from the sky, Jake, Marco and Ax allowed themselves to be forced away from Rachel and me, leaving us in the clear. We charged for the edge of the site. Yes! It would work! We were clear! Now we just had to get out before any of the boys were killed and…

The surge of elation I felt brought my attention to an absence of something else.

<Rachel,> I said, <is it just me, or have we not heard from Visser Three for a while?>

<I picked up this morph in the methane swamps below the singing fields of Gletharne Six,> Visser Three’s voice hissed in our heads. <Do you like it?>

I tried to turn to take a look at this apparently impressive morph, and couldn’t. I could move enough muscles to breathe and avoid falling over and that was about it. A dull pain radiated from a point in my lower back.

<Hmm, this doesn’t seem to be working on the Earth animal. But I know it works on hork-bajir. Now the real question is, can you demorph in this state? And will the venom work in your andalite body? Both interesting questions. I invite you to find the answer. Or don’t, if you prefer. I doubt it will make much difference.>

<Where are you?!> Rachel bellowed. <Come out and fight me!>

<No, no, I don’t think so; not today. Nobody is watching. There is no need for games. If my soldiers out there don’t manage to bring me the _escafil_ device – and my faith in them diminishes by the day – then I will need a consolation prize. A new andalite host, for one of my favourite lieutenants. >

Rachel snorted, which is a sight to see on an elephant. <I don’t think so.> She picked me up in her trunk.

Then she bellowed in bewilderment and rage.

<Only two eyes,> the Visser admonished. <Such a design flaw.>

<Don’t respond,> I warned Rachel before she could make some sort of ‘blind slug’ quip. <We give him nothing, remember?>

<Oh I’ll give him something when I find him,> Rachel raged. She swung her head wildly, trying to locate the Visser without sight. My view of the world swung wildly, as did my internal organs, it seemed, without me being able to make all those little unconscious muscle adjustments that stop sudden movement from being totally nauseating. I didn’t complain – Rachel had enough to worry about.

<Hey guys,> David said. <What’s going on here?>

<David?!> I tried to scan the sky, which is difficult when being swung back and forth by an elephant and also being unable to move your own neck. <Where are you? Get out of here! It’s dangerous!>

<You’d think so, but nobody is paying any attention to the sky,> he said. <They’re playing keep-away with the other andalites, but whatever the plan is here, you might want to hurry it up.>

<The plan right now is to crush this pest and get out of here,> Rachel growled. <David, can you see Visser Three?>

<What does he look like?>

<No idea,> I said wearily. <He’s a shapeshifter like us. But we don’t have time – >

<Anything weird or alien, do you see it?!>

<In this construction site full of weird aliens?!>

<Yes! Whatever! Anything new! Help me get him!>

<We _don’t have time for this_ ,> I insisted. <Visser Three is not the priority here. David, we need an exit!>

<Oh, that’s easy. Charge ahead, like, five steps, then left.>

Rachel had the foresight to tuck me safely under her belly before charging, which was fortunate, because from the sound of it we ran right through a wall.

<Wrong way, andalite!> the Visser crowed. We ignored him. Or I did, at any rate.

<Sorry, sorry!> David said quickly. <I didn’t realise your steps were that big. Back up and… no, actually, just keep going, umm… that distance again.>

We did. David guided us around a couple of buildings and to the very edge of the construction site. The Visser’s crowing turned to annoyance behind us, but whatever he had morphed into clearly wasn’t fast enough to keep up. <Aren’t people going to see this and cause us a lot of trouble?> David asked as we weaved our way out.

<You’d think so, wouldn’t you?> I said. <So far the yeerks have covered our tracks pretty well.> That luck was going to run out, though. Something we should start considering more. <Are we clear?>

<No aliens or anything.>

<Humans?>

<Not that I can see.>

<Go to your dad. We’ll catch up.> I started demorphing, sheltered by a large pile of rubble. Rachel wasn’t paralysed, so I figured my human body would be safe, too. It would only be a short stop, though. I still needed to be a hork-bajir.

I still needed my blades.

I shrank. My skin thinned. My muscles rearranged themselves, shrank to nothing, grew from nothing – became an arrangement of human muscles overlaying human bones. I flexed my arms, and the muscles moved. Yes!

Rachel put me down. <Hurry up, I’m a blind elephant in a public street,> she said tersely. I didn’t see anybody around, but I still hid myself behind her bulk and morphed back as fast as I could.

Moment of truth.

Because right then, a very important question hit me. One that we should have considered at some point in the past, given how often we were attacked with bug spray and the like, but one which I’d never bothered to ask. Did morphing remove poison?

Oh, we’d demorphed to avoid being poisoned before, but usually into something that was immune to that poison. Humans weren’t affected by bug spray, for example. Given that Rachel hadn’t been paralysed, it was likely that whatever poison the Visser had used didn’t affect Earth animals, which meant that my human body would be fine. But when I morphed back, would the poison still be in my system? Would I be paralysed again? Would I be unable to use my blades for the next part?

Only one way to find out.

I closed my eyes. I focused.

And I hoped against hope that my guess about how morphing worked was right.

  



	14. Chapter 14

My skin thickened. My bones lengthened and changed shape. My blades grew.

I moved an arm up and down, flexed the wrist. Was it weaker? Was it clumsier? I was imagining it. I had to be imagining it. I wasn’t paralysed, after all, and that was the important thing.

I could make the cut. That would be enough.

<Does it hurt?> I asked Rachel as I lined up my blade.

<You’re the biologist, Cassie,> she said tersely. <What do you think?>

I took that as a very emphatic ‘yes’ and made the cut. Rachel screamed an elephant scream as I sliced part of her belly open.

To me, it was a huge cut, but it was barely any length at all on the elephant’s form. <Sorry,> I told her as I reached into her intestines and pulled out a slippery, goo-covered, horrible-smelling blue cube. Elephant blood and mucous made it difficult to grip the rounded edges, and it slipped from my grip.

Rachel, predictably, attacked me. I slashed at her trunk with my blades. <Demorph!> I insisted. <Demorph and it’ll be fine!>

Somehow, in the haze of pain and rage and adrenalin, she focused and began to shrink.

I focused on my own demorph. I really needed to get out of the habit of all this morphing. It seemed like the last couple of missions had been nothing but non-stop morphing. Was morphing quickly something you could get better at? Was it like working out, getting morph-fit? Maybe Ax would know.

“That,” Rachel gasped once she was human, “was the most painful thing that has ever happened to me.”

“You’ve been disembowelled before,” I pointed out, reasonably.

“Yeah, in battle! When we’re fighting and there’s too much happening to feel anything properly! I’ve never been cut open as an elephant before battle, had something painfully shoved into my guts, had to morph the skin closed over it, and then charge around like I was fine while Visser Three shot poisoned needles into my eyes! Cassie, I know I’m the last person in the world to be saying this, but your plans are all nuts.”

“I’m sorry. It was the only thing I could think of. None of the rest of us were big enough, and...” I shrugged.

“Yeah, I know, it… it worked. Let’s get out of here before the boys get killed.” Rachel closed her eyes to focus, then opened one and raised a brow at me. “Are you wiping elephant guts on your brand new fashionable leotard that we bought together?”

I paused in the middle of cleaning the _escafil_ device. “It’s had worse on it,’ I pointed out.

“Worse than smelly juices from inside an elephant?”

“I promise to clean all the elephant guts off my feathers so they don’t get soaked back into the leotard,” I sighed.

‘You’d better.” She closed her eyes again.

I stripped off my long-sleeved gloves and tied them into a sort of harness around the cube, one that an eagle’s talons would be able to grip. By the time I was finished, Rachel was mostly eagle; she picked up the cube, pumped her powerful wings, and rose.

<Jake, we’re clear,> she called as she took off.

I still had to focus on my own escape, but I permitted myself the time to watch her fly off first. There it was – the cube that had started it all, the technology that had kept us alive, in our hands and out of the hands of the yeerks. Our victory. She’d hide it well before returning to meet up with the rest of us and finishing the other little part of our mission.


	15. Chapter 15

As I approached the house where we’d stashed David’s father, I knew something was wrong.

One of the back windows was broken. I was certain it hadn’t been so before. Had one of us broken it making an entrance? No, we knew better than to try to fly through closed windows. I hung back at a safe distance.

<Everything alright in there, Tobias?> I asked privately.

<You’d better come in,> he said.

I did.

David sat on the couch that had been dragged into the laundry, looking numb. The rope we’d used to tie his father was lying in a tangled mess at his feet. Tobias sat on the back of the couch, talons cutting straight through the fabric. I landed on the floor and hopped over to inspect the rope. It didn’t look like it’d been cut.

<Did you see him at all?> I asked.

David shook his head. “He was already gone,” he said.

<I was sure we’d tied him up properly.>

“You did. I checked. He’s just like that.”

<I’m sorry.>

Marco fluttered down next to Tobias. <When you said your Dad was in the secret service I thought he did paperwork or something, not that he was some kind of escapologist superspy,> he remarked.

<Is everyone – ?>

<They’re fine,> Marco told me. <Rachel?>

<She’ll be here in a minute.>

The rest of the team arrived as soon as I finished talking, three owls swooping silently into the room. They took in the situation.

<Sorry,> Jake said. David just nodded.

<We could try to track him,> Rachel suggested feebly.

“He’s long gone,” David muttered. “We’ll have to rescue him all over again.”

<We will,> Jake promised. <We can’t right now, but eventually, we will.>

I half-expected David to argue. I thought he’d say we hadn’t held up our end of the bargain; we had the blue box but his father was still out there, a slave of the enemy. But he just nodded.

After a moment of awkward silence, I ventured, <Um, should we…?>

<Yes,> Jake said. <We need to get some rest before getting out of here. Demorph, everyone.>

After all the secrecy, all the careful protection of our identities, it felt weird to be demorphing in front of someone new. I forced myself to focus on my real body and grew, my eyes becoming human as I did so. The feathers vanished off my face and torso as my human shape asserted itself. I left the wings for last.

Okay, so maybe I was kind of making an effort to look good – or at least keep the horrifying stuff to an absolute minimum – in front of the new teammate.

I needn’t have worried. David hadn’t exactly been able to see our human forms in the dark cellar, but he’d experienced it himself when he morphed to red-tailed hawk. He looked a bit grossed out when Rachel’s beak split open to reveal human lips beneath, and flinched back when clean white finger bones burst out of Jake’s wings, but what put him out most was the few seconds after we were done, four kids awkwardly shuffling our feet in an abandoned laundry and an andalite, slightly too large, lurking in the hall.

He stared at Marco. “Marco?”

“Hi, David. Welcome to the team.”

His gaze flicked to Rachel. “I’ve seen you. You’re a cheerleader.”

“Gymnast.”

“You’re not aliens! You’re just a bunch of kids!”

<I am an alien,> Ax put in helpfully.

“Are you an alien kid?”

Ax had nothing to say to that. David glared at Tobias. “What about you? Are you gonna be the principal or something?”

<I’m just your friendly neighbourhood red-tailed hawk,> Tobias said, preening a wing. <I’d watch out for the Assistant Principal, though. He’s a big man in the yeerk organisation.>

David looked like he wanted to punch him.

“David,” Jake said, “I’m sorry about… all that. Secrecy is important. We tell absolutely no one who we are, not even our allies. If the yeerks even knew we were human, it’d be _so easy_ for them to find us, and we’d be their weapons. Only Animorphs get told who the Animorphs are, and you’re an Animorph now, so...”

“Animorph?”

“Animal morpher,” Marco said. “It sounded clever at the time. This is Jake, by the way. Our Fearless Leader.”

“You’re the leader?” David asked Jake, sounding disbelieving.

“I don’t get it either but they keep insisting,” Jake shrugged. “Marco, you know. Tobias is over on the couch, he’s our main intelligence guy. Aximili over there is our alien expert and spokesperson.”

“Cassie’s our biologist, don’t mind the tree-hugging,” Marco cut in, flicking his fingers in my direction, “and Rachel is Xena: Warrior Princess.”

“And you’re fighting the alien body snatchers?” David asked, glancing from Animorph to Animorph. “You?”

“Afraid so.”

“What about the andalites?”

<My people are the main force opposing the yeerks in this war,> Ax confirmed, <but it is a large war with many fronts. They will take time to amass on Earth. Our mission is to, ah, ‘hold the line’ until my uncles are able to coordinate an assault here.>

“Ah.” David nodded. “The Earth is doomed.”

“Hey, we ruled out there today,” Rachel protested. “They had us surrounded! We should’ve been doomed and we kicked butt.”

“We barely escaped alive and completely failed to rescue my dad!”

“We’ll rescue him,” Jake promised. “Your mom, too.”

“When?”

“As soon as we can. I’m fighting to rescue my brother.”

“Does he know?”

“He’d kill me in my sleep if he did. The thing in his head would force him to.”

“This whole thing is nuts,” David muttered.

“This whole thing needs doing,” Rachel said simply. “If not us, then who?”

“I’m sorry to pull you in like this,” Jake said. “I know you didn’t really have much choice down there. But none of us had much choice either. And here we are. Are you with us?”

David was silent for a long time.

After a while, he said, “I already agreed to fight with you, down there in the cellar. I keep my promises, so long as you do, too. We are gonna rescue my family.”

“It won’t be the same as it was before,” I warned.

“I know. But we’re going to rescue them.”

“Yes,” Jake said. “We are.”

“Okay.” David squared his shoulders, set his jaw. “Then I guess I’m an Animorph.”


End file.
